Editor’s Note: This story was edited on Monday, July 28 at 4:30 p.m. to fix the name of Sam Bush’s band.
The Kentucky Museum will be celebrating the grand opening of the exhibit “Sonic Landscape: The Musical Legacy of Southcentral Kentucky” on September 6, which will highlight various musical contributions throughout Southcentral Kentucky.
The exhibition will be open from September 2025 to December 2030 and will feature oral historical interviews, artifacts, memorabilia and photographs from over 90 musicians, producers and insiders from the Southcentral Kentucky soundscape, including Cage the Elephant, Bill Monroe, Cousin Emmy and more.
“Southcentral Kentucky continues to be ‘home’ for many musicians – no matter how far their musical journeys may take them,” The Kentucky Museum website states. “Interwoven with the spoken and sung voices of those who’ve lived it, “Sonic Landscape” provides an intimate journey through our home – and the decades of songs that have transformed American music.”
According to the Kentucky Museum’s website, the research of the exhibit has been led by the Kentucky Folklife Program in partnership with the WKU Folk Studies professors, students and the Kentucky Museum team, who have conducted the interviews and collected the items that form the exhibit.
Brent Bjorkman, the director of the Kentucky Museum and Kentucky Folklife Program, said that the exhibit has been in development since 2016. Bjorkman said Folk Studies Instructor Sydney Varajon, who at the time was completing her master’s capstone, conducted around 30 oral interviews with various musicians.
“We went on to other musical people, more record store owners, more recording studio people. So that research got us just more in tune to this whole idea.” Bjorkman said.
Those working on the project in 2016 started to produce a website showcasing the research, and since then, the research has continued to grow and will now showcase the installation.
“We (The Kentucky Museum) represent art, history and culture, and it all comes together in this exhibit,” Bjorkman said. “It’s history, but it’s also the local culture and it’s a lot of things to be prideful for, so we want students to learn why they’re in a very cool place.”
The Kentucky Museum will be partnering with Potters College of Arts and Letters Cultural Enhancement Series to hold the Sonic Music Fest for the community to kick off the opening of the exhibit
The festival will begin at the Kentucky Museum from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. and will feature food trucks, art activities and performances throughout the evening by The Songfarmers, Jane Pearl, Bill Lloyd and Kyle Fredrick.
The festival will follow a concert by Bowling Green native and bluegrass artist, Sam Bush at 7 p.m. in Van Meter Hall. Bush will return to Van Meter Hall auditorium on the tenth anniversary of his last concert at WKU, according to WKU News.
A WKU honorary doctorate recipient and 2023 Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductee, Bush received his first mandolin in 1964 at age 11. By the end of the 1970s, Bush and his band New Grass Revival built a following that allowed them to tour 42 weeks out of the year, according to Bush’s Blue Grass Hall of Fame biography.
Over the past two decades he has released seven albums and in 2009 was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for instrumentalist by the Americana Music Association, according to Bush’s website.
Admission to the festival and concert is free and seating is available on a first-served, first-come basis.
