MORGANTOWN – If you take in a gig by Aristotle Jones and his band, be prepared to settle in and be there for a while – not just for the music, but for all the Mountain State history and tales that will arrive with it.
“Hey, man, I’m just trying to advance the mission,” Jones said, with a smile in his voice.
Jones, who is known on bandstands as “The Appalachian Soul Man,” weaves narratives and asides of just what it’s like being a person of color in West Virginia – interspersed with his original tunes drawing on diverse sources from Motown to Mississippi John Hurt.
And now, the musician, songwriter and storyteller is about to trod a bigger stage.
Earlier this week he was awarded a fellowship and stipend through United States Artists, a Chicago organization that honors creativity across the country.
An additional offering, exclusively earmarked for social causes, is also part of the total fellowship: which also includes support for financial planning, career consulting and care for personal health.
This year’s cohort hails from 19 states and the District of Columbia.
Filmmakers and sculptors are include in that cohort, United States Artists President and CEO Judilee Reed said.
So are choreographers, glassmakers, teachers and mixed-media painters.
Community organizers, too.
“For two decades, United States Artists has advanced a simple, yet powerful conviction, Reed said in her official announcement of this year’s cohort. “That artists are essential to the imagination and health of our society.”
Visit www.unitedstatesartists.org to learn more.
The Appalachian Soul Man, meanwhile, will take it, he said – even if his head is still spinning from everyone’s resumes and portfolios.
“I’m looking at the people in the cohort, and I’m still trying to process it all,” Jones said.
“Collectively, it’s amazing body of work,” he said. “It’s really something when you’re first taking it in.”
His grandfather, Robert, a coal miner and traveling gospel singer in possession of a rich baritone voice and accessible personality, first schooled him on the art of taking it in.
Robert taught Aristotle to appreciate people and diversity that can be found here.
Even in Osage, he said. Especially in Osage.
After all, the elder statesmen said, Osage had diverse sources, too.
The camp near Scotts Run was home to whites from Appalachia, Blacks from Alabama, Italians from Calabria, and more, at the peak of coal mining in West Virginia.
“Granddad used to always say, ‘You know what you’re doing. So go out there and get it done.’”
