Speaker Session: From Appalachia to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia with Toni Doman-Vandyke

Date: Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Time: 7 p.m. ET

Location: In-person at the Birthplace of Country Music, Performance Theatre and streamed on Radio Bristol’s YouTube Channel

In this talk, Fulbright recipient Toni Doman-Vandyke will explore technology’s impact on the traditional music community of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada. With our growing reliance on technologies, both listeners and players have increased access to musical influences outside of their geographic region, and Toni’s project documents the current traditional music scene in Cape Breton and seeks to uncover how access to outside musical influences is shaping the region’s traditional music. Toni will share stories from her past year of being immersed in the island’s cultural community, collecting field recordings of musical gatherings and events along with in-depth interviews with musicians and cultural caretakers primarily focusing on traditional music of Scottish and Gaelic origin. She will also share connections between Appalachian and Maritime musical histories and styles.

Toni Doman-Vandyke is a 2023-2024 Fulbright Canada Student Award recipient. Her research project Complex Relationships: Contemporaries Technologies and the Traditional Music of Cape Breton, focuses on uncovering how globalization and technology have an impact and are interacting within the traditional musical scene in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. She is currently the Director of the Tazewell County Junior Appalachian Musicians (JAM) Program Chapter. Her previous work includes multiple roles at the Birthplace of Country Music, including Curatorial Specialist and Grants Coordinator. During this time, she produced and hosted Mountain Song & Story on WBCM Radio Bristol which showcased influential Appalachian artisans and traditions through in-depth interviews, music, and storytelling. Toni holds a Master’s Degree in Communications and Media Arts and Studies from Ohio University focusing on Appalachian music and culture as the core of her graduate research and is one of the few students to earn the world’s first four-year degree in traditional bluegrass music offered at Glenville State University in West Virginia. Toni is also a musician currently performing in the country-folk duo Virginia West, and she has recently embarked on a new journey baking homemade pies at her home-based pie shop, The Rolling Pin. Through all her creative outlets, Toni aims to promote arts and culture for a greater understanding of the Appalachian region.