About the publication
Folklore is a living practice.
The Crooked Tune is conceived as a publication about Ozark traditional music, folklore, belief, landscape, and memory — with room for scholarship, fieldwork, audio, and literary writing.
One publication, three registers.
The Crooked Tune is the master identity and the broad editorial home. Its regular work is reported, archival, musical, and folkloristic.
Black Walnut Radio is the audio expression: recordings, interviews, performances, oral history, narrated essays, and future podcast work.
Ozark Nocturne is the literary expression: slower essays about place, memory, folklore, and music, written with more room for atmosphere and personal observation.
Editorial principles
Specific before spooky. Name the person, place, collector, tune, object, date, and source before leaning on atmosphere.
Tradition is not a museum case. Contemporary musicians and living communities belong beside archival material.
Belief deserves context. Neither sneer at traditional belief nor market it as paranormal certainty.
Music is evidence. Tune family, tuning, repertoire, performance practice, and recording history deserve the same care as narrative folklore.
The Ozarks are not generic Appalachia. Visuals and writing should come from the region’s own ecology, history, music, material culture, and landscape.