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Josh Goforth, one of the four tellers at next week’s Azalea Storytelling Festival, will present “Ballads and Bagpipes: The music of our Scottish Ancestors” for LaGrange College’s 3D Journeys lecture series on Tuesday, March 4, at 10 a.m., at Turner Hall. 

He will speak about his firsthand experience of sharing songs with the locals in Scotland.

“While I was staying in the country, I felt an immediate connection to the people,” he said. 

Goforth said it was interesting to learn how the songs from his Appalachian roots are not so different from what is performed in Scotland. 

“The ballads of western North Carolina have language that immediately translates across the oceanic divide,” he said. “The lexicons are strikingly similar, and the cultural ideas presented are connected on a deep level.”