“Building Relationships with the ‘Other’”
I will speak on the journey of my last two and a half years documenting the music of serpent handling churches of Appalachia. It will center on how love and understanding can bridge cultural and religious divides, and birth powerful relationships. I will also play a few songs.
Abe Partridge is a heralded musician, singer/songwriter, visual artist, and documentarian based in Mobile, Alabama. His 2018 debut, Cotton Fields and Blood For Days earned him rave reviews, with Tony Paris saying in The Bitter Southerner: “He plays guitar the same way he writes lyrics, bashing the strings with abandon until they are just about to come loose, then beautifully picking the notes until every last word falls into place. More to the point, Partridge writes to make you sit up and think. He wants to jar your reality. Sometimes, his lyrics are sly and subtle. Sometimes they come at you with a roar and thunder, as if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were approaching, and the heavens were
opening up to herald a warning.”
When Partridge is not writing or touring, He is creating his folk art paintings, which now hang in art galleries around the southeast and in the private collections. Partridge is now gearing up for an exhibit of his artwork at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center in Mobile in January of 2023 and the release of his full-length studio album, Love In The Dark, on BCPR label in the spring of 2023.
- Facilitator: Ted Pettus
- Musician: Craig Rafuse