America's Southern Highlands - the Blue Ridge Mountains and entire Southern Appalachian mountain region of western North Carolina, southwest Virginia and eastern Tennessee - are the heart of a traditional music-making legacy that is unique in America. This is a region where traditional music - bluegrass, country & old-time - and dance are performed and celebrated as nowhere else in America.

Here you'll discover the birthplace of country, classic country, bluegrass, old-time and gospel music - where the region's early settlers from Britain, Europe and Africa came with their fiddles and banjos, ballads and gospel hymns - and laid the foundation of what we now know as the most traditional American music. This is where it all began - and where the mountain roots are kept alive by today's singers, songwriters and musicians - and even in the soundtracks of recent popular films such as Songcatcher, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Cold Mountain.

Join The Crooked Road Music Trail that winds through the beautiful Appalachian Mountains and the heart of America's Southern Highlands.
See where it all began - and where the mountain music and its rich traditions are still a way of life.

• Merlefest
• Galax String and Leaf Festival
• Ralph Stanley Memorial Bluegrass Festival
• Carter Family Memorail Festival
• Old Time Fiddler's Convention
• Tweetsie Railroad
• Blue Ridge Parkway
• Blowing Rock
• Grandfather Mountain

Click here to download our Music Heritage PDF.