Explore 'Music of the Civil Rights Movement' on Sunday

The Algonquin Area Public Library invites the community to hear "Music of the Civil Rights Movement" at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 15, at the Eastgate Branch, 115 Eastgate Drive in Algonquin.

Award-winning folk singer Chris Vallillo performs essential songs and discusses the importance of music to this vital chapter in American history.

This presentation is sponsored by the Illinois Humanities Council and commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Vallillo is a nationally acclaimed singer/songwriter and folk musician who makes the people and places of "unmetropolitan" America come to life in song. Having spent the last 30 years in the rural Midwest, he has a natural affinity for American roots music. Performing on six-string and bottleneck slide guitars and harmonica, Vallillo weaves original, contemporary, and traditional songs and narratives into a compelling and entertaining portrait of the history and lifestyles of the Midwest.

A recipient of a 1986 Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award for music composition, Chris was also a nominee for the Illinois Arts Council's 1987 Governor's Award for Individual Artist. In 1987, he conducted the Schuyler Arts Folk Music Project to document the last of the pre-radio generation. These recordings were accepted into the American Folklife Collection at the Library of Congress.

From 1990 through 1998 he served as the performing host and co-producer of the nationally distributed, award-winning public radio performance series Rural Route 3 where he performed next to (and with) a virtual who's who of contemporary and traditional folk musicians. His project, a one-man show titled "Abraham Lincoln in Song," received the endorsement of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and the accompanying CD of music reached no. 10 on Billboard's Bluegrass Album Chart in March of 2008.

He recently completed his second term as the Illinois State Scholar for the Smithsonian Institution's traveling exhibit on roots music New Harmonies and just finished a new instrumental bottleneck slide guitar CD titled "The Last Day of Winter."

For details, visit www.aapld.org.