Saro Lynch-Thomason

About

Saro Lynch-Thomason is a song leader, folklorist, scholar and ritualist based in Asheville, North Carolina. She offers a way into songs that help people find release, kinship, perseverance and liberation, grounding people's history in music that can be carried into classrooms, onto stages or to the picket line. Her study covers traditional songs from Appalachia, the Anglo-Celtic Isles and the American South, from 19th-century Appalachian camp meeting songs and 17th-century English ballads to 20th-century labor anthems and new songs honoring Iron-Age goddesses. She moved to Asheville in 2009 and learned from singers such as Bobby McMillon and Sheila Kay Adams. She earned an Appalachian Studies M.A. at East Tennessee State University and a Documentary Studies certificate at Duke University; she has played festivals in the U.S. and abroad and taught at folk music camps. Her albums cover traditional ballads, women's history and the West Virginia Coal Mine Wars, and her song "There Are More Waters Rising" became an anthem of the climate movement. She also conducts the Western North Carolina Pagan Choir, teaches online courses and plays in the Celtic band Émigré.