The Missouri Folk Arts Program has chosen the recipients of the inaugural Missouri Living Traditions Sustainer Fellowship, the state’s newest award to recognize the artistic excellence and lifetime achievement of living traditional artists in the Show Me State. The fellowships honor these individuals’ deep-rooted contributions to their art forms and to the vibrant communities in Missouri that the artists support. 

An independent panel of traditional arts and community specialists selected the honorees from a competitive pool of public nominations. This new project is made possible through grant funds received from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Missouri Arts Council, with support from the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri.

The 2023 honorees will be recognized in a ceremony from 2:30 – 5 p.m. at Compass, Inc.,1107 University Avenue, in Columbia, on May 21.

Living Traditions Sustainer Fellowships are modeled on the National Heritage Fellowships presented since 1982 by the NEA. For Missouri’s fellowship, Missouri Folk Arts Program uses the NEA’s definition of folk and traditional arts:

The folk and traditional arts, which include crafts, dance, music, oral traditions, visual arts, and others, are those that are learned as part of the cultural life of a community whose members share a common ethnic heritage, cultural mores, language, religion, occupation, or geographic region. These traditions are shaped by the aesthetics and values of a shared culture and are passed from generation to generation, most often within family and community through observation, conversation, and practice.

“We at Missouri Folk Arts are delighted to welcome the inaugural Living Traditions Sustainer Fellows! Both make indelible contributions artistically and culturally in their communities—and the cultural fabric of the Show Me State itself,” Lisa L. Higgins, Missouri Folk Arts Director said. “Congratulations to the 2023 fellows and to those who nominated them.  

Missouri’s 2023 Living Traditions Sustainer Fellows are:

Kenny Applebee, old-time rhythm guitarist of Mexico, Mo. 

Kenny Applebee is widely recognized as a mainstay of old-time music in Missouri. He has “backed” fiddlers on his rhythm guitar for decades at contests, jams, concerts, dances, and the Bethel Youth Fiddle Camp. Applebee picked up the guitar at age 14 and credits a regional flat picker for teaching “all the chords I needed to know.” As an adult, he got involved in Missouri’s vibrant old-time music community via the Montgomery City Old Threshers Reunion and Fiddle Contest. In addition to a lifelong career in farming, over the years, Applebee has evolved as the “go-to” back-up guitarist for numerous fiddlers from multiple generations. His notable honors include invitations to perform in 1988 with Rhonda Vincent and the late Pete McMahan in Hannibal, as well was at the 1991 Smithsonian Folklife Festival and the 2010 Centrum Festival of American Fiddle Tunes. He accompanies master fiddler John P. Williams regularly for the Missouri State Museum and Old-time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival. Additionally, Applebee has taught three rhythm guitar apprentices in Missouri’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program between 2017 and 2021. 

Nominators David Cavins and Amber Gaddy wrote of Applebee: “Having able and trusted backup can be the difference between fiddlers showing up for an event or staying home. It can be the difference between a jam session hanging together or falling apart. Kenny’s dedication to being a steady backup and training other accompanists is critical to the continued success of individual fiddlers as well as dances, contests, and jam sessions in the region.” 

About the Missouri Folk Arts Program

In the mid-1980s, the Missouri Arts Council (MAC) and University of Missouri formed a partnership with National Endowment for the Arts grants that established a statewide folk arts program to support traditional artists, their communities, and organizations. With ongoing grants from the NEA and MAC, the Missouri Folk Arts Program continues to build cross-cultural understanding by documenting, sustaining, and sharing our state’s living folk arts and folklife in collaboration with Missouri’s citizens. Since 1993, Missouri Folk Arts Program has been anchored at the University’s Museum of Art and Archaeology. 

For more information on the Missouri Folk Arts Program, contact Lisa L. Higgins, director, HigginsLL@missouri.edu, 573-882-6296, https://mofolkarts.missouri.edu/.