The World of Dust-to-Digital

Surveying the beautiful music all around us: our first Substack post.

John Work III teaching music composition at Fisk University, ca. 1950.

In 1941, composer and professor of music John Work III, introduced a program at Fisk University’s 75th anniversary celebration in Nashville. He expressed to the audience that there is no shortage of beautiful music surrounding them. All it takes is awareness and curiosity to tune in. It is this belief that inspires the mission of Dust-to-Digital, and it is in this spirit that we launch our first Substack.

Here is Work’s inspirational quote from 81 years ago that still rings true today:

The chief purpose of this program is to present for your enjoyment some of the highly interesting folklore in our immediate community and to establish the thesis that in each of your communities there is an abundance of significant folklore of which you have been generally unaware but which can easily be discovered usually and made available for the community’s appreciation and education. If a title for this program were necessary it would be – ‘The Beautiful Music All Around You.’

In your community you may not have a quartet that can sing like ours. You probably will not have a group of instrumentalists who will play the 19th Century folk dance reels. But you will find some delightful music if you seek it out. — John Work III

Lance and April, ca. 2000.

In 1998, Lance Ledbetter met April Gambill at Georgia State University. The following year they began working on what would become Dust-to-Digital’s first release, a six-CD box set called “Goodbye, Babylon.” In the 24 years since, the two have won multiple Grammy Awards for producing the Best Historical Album of the year, and the Dust-to-Digital social media channels have accumulated an audience of more than 2 million followers.

Lance and April Ledbetter, Summer 2021.

We view the Substack platform as the space for us to connect with you and to share deeper dives into both our record label and social media. To read more about what we are doing here, check out our About page, and stay tuned for more!