Montañitas Reimagined
Montañitas Reimagined, a project in collaboration with Estela Diaz Knott from the Lua Project, the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 621 in Luray, Virginia, and Dr. Amy Azano, Director of the Virginia Tech Center for Rural Education, reimagines Appalachia as a shared and co-created space with, by, and alongside Latine communities. This monument project commemorates and reimagines our “little mountains'' by celebrating Latine Appalachian art, food, music, and culture at the Blue Ridge Montañita Festival; by creating interdisciplinary place-based community educational materials; and by producing a digital album so that a more nuanced and complex story of the region can be shared locally, regionally, and beyond.
Upcoming Events
Project Collaborators
Estela Diaz Knott
Estela Diaz Knott is a vocalist, songwriter, and dancer, who grew up in the Shenandoah Valley, daughter of a Scots-Irish factory worker, and a persistent, hard working Mexican mother, from whom she clearly gets her community organizing skills. Estela’s mother, Lupe, has been a beacon for migrant farm/factory workers and Spanish speaking immigrants for over 50 years. Growing up surrounded by her brother, Mexican cousins, and uncles, Estela was rooted in a bilingual, bicultural home that was infused with country music and the clogging traditions of the Shenandoah Valley, as well as her mother’s musical traditions from the borderlands of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas. As an adult, she has performed widely throughout Appalachia, Mexico, and Peru. In the early 2000’s, She studied cajon with master afro-peruvian percussionist Chebo Ballumbrosio, and was a faculty member of La Tarumba, a circus arts school in Lima, Peru. She also studied son jarocho music in Veracruz Mexico with Pablo Campechano Gorgonio and more recently with Zenen Zeferino, with whom she collaborated on the Virginia Humanities sponsored project, Mexilachian Son: New Songs from an Emerging Virginia Culture. She is currently the co-founder and director of Blue Ridge Music Together, an early childhood music program in Charlottesville Va. and is a member of the Virginia Commission for the Arts Touring Artist roster.
Estela has performed and presented at many conferences dedicated to Appalachian and World music, including the National String Band Summit at Eastern Tennessee State University, the Rural Education Center Conference at Virginia Tech, the Berea College Celebration of Traditional music, JMU’s Crafting Local Commemorations : Honoring Día de los Muertos in the Shenandoah Valley and has co-presented with Dr. Brenci Patiño for the SOMOS conference at James Madison University. She has partnered with Dr. Sophia Enriquez, an associate professor at Duke University, not only as a subject of her dissertation, but on a number of musical projects and workshops geared towards educators, one of which was the Smithsonian Folkways World Music Pedagogy Course at West Virginia University. In 2021, Estela was chosen by the Mexican embassy as one of 40 Mexican American artists to participate in the 2nd Bi-national Conference for Artists of Mexican Origin based in the United States, in Mexico City.
Estela has also been an important community organizer in her community, hosting the annual Day of the Dead celebration at the McGuffey Art Center each year, where she has been a resident artist for 12 years. She also co-founded, in collaboration with the immigrant advocacy organization Sin Barreras, C’ville Sabroso, a groundbreaking Latin American music, dance, and culture festival based in Charlottesville, Virginia that brings in over 4000 visitors each year.
David Berzonsky
David Berzonsky is an accomplished bassist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. His original compositions and arrangements are in homage to his Jewish and Appalachian heritage, seeking to re-root old world melodies into the rich rhythmic soil of the New World. He is a member of the Virginia Commision for the Arts Touring Artist roster, and has received multiple grant awards from Virginia Humanities. He is known for his versatility as a bassist, with a range that includes jazz, latin, bossanova, reggae, and Malian traditional music. He has performed at the Kennedy Center Millenium Stage with two groups– acclaimed gypsy jazz ensemble The Olivarez Trio, and with the Malian griot and ngoni master Cheick Hamala Diabate. He has written several Jewish liturgical melodies which have been performed at Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville, Va and has performed at Temple Micah in Washington, DC. He is also a passionate and dedicated early childhood and family music instructor, who has taught thousands of families in Charlottesville, Va and Berkeley, Ca.
Luna Berzonsky
Luna Berzonsky is a talented multi-instrumentalist and graphic artist, who fulfills a number of roles in Lua Project— on percussion, violin, jarana, and vocals. She has performed widely with the group over the past year, charming audiences with her crystalline high harmonies and warm stage presence. She has begun working on her own arrangements and compositions, and collaborating closely with David Berzonsky on the Jewish themed pieces. In Montanitas Re-Imagined, she will have a number of roles: as a performer, researcher, writer, and production assistant. She is in tenth grade at Tandem Friends School in Charlottesville, Va.
Amy Price Azano
Amy Price Azano is the founding director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Rural Education and a Professor of Rural Education and Adolescent Literacy. She serves as principal investigator for multiple rural education grants, including the Appalachian Rural Talent Initiative and SEE VT: the Summer Enrichment Experience at Virginia Tech. A product of rural schools herself, Amy grew up in beautiful Luray, Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley and became a first-generation college graduate. She taught high school English and creative writing before pursuing her doctorate in education from the University of Virginia. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, is the co-editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Rural Education in the United States and Gifted Education in Rural Schools: Developing Place-Based Interventions and is the co-author of Teaching in Rural Places: Thriving in Classrooms, Schools, and Communities. In 2021, Dr. Azano received the E. Stanley A. Brzezinski Memorial Rural Education Research Award from the National Rural Education Association, an award that honors educational research that addresses significant rural issues and makes notable contributions to the knowledge base of rural education. She was honored in 2022 by receiving the Rural Renewal Research Prize, an award given to a global leader in rural renewal research, education, and engagement, by the Rural Renewal Initiative at Oklahoma State University. At Virginia Tech, Dr. Azano has received the Land Grant Scholar and Excellence in Research and Creative Scholarship awards from the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences.