Author: Zoe van Buren
Since 1989, the North Carolina Heritage Awards have honored artists statewide for their contributions to the cultural lives of their communities. The Folklife program of the North Carolina Arts Council is pleased to announce the five artists/groups who will be presented with the 2025 awards on June 7, at a public ceremony in Raleigh. For tickets and more information, visit pinecone.org.
Chester McMillian
Round Peak Guitarist, Mount Airy (Surry County)
Chester McMillian was born in Carroll County, Va., into a musical family and community. His family moved to Surry County, N.C., so that his father could work in the Mount Airy granite industry, and at eight years old he began playing mandolin and guitar with his brothers. When Chester married the daughter of Dix Freeman, a well-known old-time musician from the Round Peak community of Surry County, he was drawn in to the old-time music scene and started playing guitar alongside the legends of that region. Chester’s most influential musical mentor was Tommy Jarrell, a master of Round Peak fiddle and banjo, who quickly picked Chester as his preferred guitarist. Chester developed a unique guitar-strumming style that is now admired and imitated by younger old-time musicians who still flock to Surry County to be part of its music tradition. Chester played with Tommy Jarrell for 15 years; founded his own group, Backstep; became a fixture of the fiddlers convention circuit; and began to teach local children to play guitar through private lessons and local Junior Appalachian Musicians (JAM) programs. With every free moment and every spare dollar, Chester has been giving back to young people in Surry County through free lessons and charitable drives, donating food, shoes, and instruments to schools across the county. Chester is still teaching every week at Elkin JAM and his own Round Peak School of Music.
Herman and Loretta Oxendine
Lumbee traditional artisans, Pembroke (Robeson County)
Born and raised in Robeson County, the culture keepers and artisans Herman Oxendine and his late wife, Loretta, spent their adult lives teaching and encouraging the revival of traditional Lumbee arts and knowledge. Loretta died on October 6, 2024, shortly after learning of her Heritage Award. Herman is known primarily for his pottery, which he hand-builds using the coil method and traditionally fires, following the teachings of other American Indian potters in this state, such as the Haliwa-Saponi artist Senora Lynch and Catawba Nation master potter Nola Campbell. In his home studio, in Pembroke, Herman can also be found carving gourds and wooden bowls, painting, weaving corn-husk baskets, and making jewelry from chinaberries. Loretta was renowned for her pine needle baskets, which she learned to make at the age of eight by watching her older sister and her mother. Loretta went on to lead a revival of pine needle basketmaking among members of the Lumbee Tribe in North Carolina, teaching and demonstrating across the state and inspiring a new generation of artisans. The needles of the longleaf pine fall from the trees in July. Loretta would gather them, stitch them together with tobacco twine, and adorn the finished product with chinaberries. Such baskets traditionally hold domestic items like sewing notions, beans, or seeds. She and Herman innovated on the form by weaving longleaf pine needles into hats that have been worn by Lumbee luminaries such as Chief Harvey Godwin, Jr. and American Idol contestant Alexis Raeana. With Arvis Boughman, Loretta was the co-author of the book Herbal Remedies of the Lumbee Indians. In 2004, pottery by Herman and a pine needle basket by Loretta were part of a display at the National Museum of the American Indian, in Washington, D.C. Loretta’s work has been collected by the Peabody Museum, in Boston; the Guilford Native American Art Gallery, in Greensboro; and the N.C. Museum of History, in Raleigh.
Gaurang Doshi
North Indian classical musician, Winston-Salem (Forsyth County)
Originally from Rajkot, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, Gaurang Doshi settled in Winston-Salem in 2006, where he passes on the teachings of his guru and father, Pandit Dr. Laxmikant Doshi. Gaurang teaches his students in the traditions of the Maihar Gharana lineage of musicians, which includes the well-known musicians Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Embodying the ancient way of learning and respecting one’s teaching lineage (called the Guru-Shishya Parampara), Gaurang ensures that his students understand the sanctity of this musical tradition and the holistic nature of the relationship between the guru and the student. Along with teaching private lessons in sarod, sitar, and tabla, he leads an Indian ensemble class at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the first and only Indian classical music course at a North Carolina university. Gaurang Doshi blends in his teachings a traditional approach to the transmission of the Maihar Gharana with a contemporary emphasis on community involvement. He encourages his students to emphasize sharing the gift of their tradition with others over the quest for personal accomplishment, and, to that end, he typically showcases his students in group performances rather than in solo concerts.
Helen Gibson
Woodcarver, Brasstown (Clay County)
Helen Gibson was born in Murphy, in the far western end of North Carolina, and was raised in the community around Brasstown, where the John C. Campbell Folk School has operated since 1925. Helen grew up among the Brasstown Carvers, a community-based carving group established by Olive Dame Campbell, the Folk School’s founder, to create economic opportunity for local residents using traditional artisan skills. Helen began carving at age 11 under the teaching of her mother, Dot McClure, and Murrial “Murray” Martin, the Folk School’s craft teacher, to whom the early growth of the Brasstown Carvers can be credited. Helen later took classes under the master carver Jack Hall. Through the Carvers, Helen was uniquely taught and surrounded both by male and female wood carvers. Helen has helped to promote and preserve the traditions of the Brasstown Carvers by teaching, formally and informally, hundreds of aspiring carvers nationwide. She has been the Folk School’s resident carver since 1990, a mentor to apprentice carvers, and a teacher at home and through the Tri-County Community College. Today she is best known for her nativity scene carvings, which include both iconic Brasstown patterns as well as forms of her own design, rendered in her highly detailed style.
The Glorifying Vines Sisters
Gospel Quartet, Farmville (Pitt County)
The Glorifying Vines Sisters are one of North Carolina’s longest-established quartet-style gospel groups, having spent more than 60 years as professional touring and recording artists. The four original Vines Sisters—Alice, Dorothy, Mattie, and Audrey—came from a large family with deep roots in Pitt County and sprawling artistic talent. In their early years, the sisters sang with their other siblings as the Heavenly Ten at the Union Grove Baptist Church, near Farmville. Later, they formed the smaller group the Glorifying Vines Sisters. Their music is steeped in the traditions of quartet gospel, a style that came into its own in the 1930s with such groups as the Soul Stirrers and the Dixie Hummingbirds. Over the years, they have shared the stage with many of the biggest names in the genre, including the Mighty Clouds of Joy and the Swanee Quintet. Dorothy Vines Daniels died in 2022 and Mattie suffered a stroke not long afterward, but until then, their husbands, Johnny Ray Daniels and Curtis Vines, were also part of the band. Alice, the group’s manager, carries on her family’s legacy, often accompanied by Audrey and younger family members. Alice Vines’s influence reaches beyond the Vines Sisters, as she has become a major voice in eastern North Carolina’s gospel scene, a spiritual leader through her own church, and an active organizer of gospel programs. The children of the Vines sisters, raised in their family’s music, are keeping the tradition vibrant through celebrated gospel groups of their own.