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Thursday, July 11, 2002

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Fifth Annual Carpatho-Rusyn Event will be held from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at The Andy Warhol Museum. Warhol was a descendent of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants, an Eastern Slavic ethnic group indigenous to the Carpathian Mountain region of east-central Europe.

The theme for this year's event is "Factory, Industry and the Workplace" and includes film, music, dance, talks and hands-on activities. The Warhol Cafe will serve traditional Carpatho-Rusyn foods.

At noon, the 1964 film "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors," in Ukrainian with English subtitles, will be shown. The movie is based on a Carpathian folk legend about a boy whose life is dominated by a blood-feud. Afterward, Carpatho-Rusyn Society president John Righetti will demonstrate cheese-making processes such as those shown in the film.

Warhol's nephew, Jamie Warhola, will talk about his art and growing up a Warhol in Pittsburgh. And Anna Walco, author of the novel "Eternal Memory," and members of the Belejchak family -- relatives of "Out of This Furnace: A Novel of Immigrant Labor in America" author Thomas Bell -- will talk about living in the Rusyn immigrant community in the Industrial Age.

The event is free with admission to the North Side museum. Information: 412-237-8300 or atwww.warhol.org.

(Mary Thomas, Post-Gazette Art Critic)

Country dream

"Blue Country Heart" is the sound of Hot Tuna guitarist Jorma Kaukonen quietly chasing a dream he says he's had for years -- to make an album of great old country songs in Nashville with his friends.

As he writes in the album's liner notes, "When I first started playing guitar, it was old-timey music that captured my heart. My life has taken me many places, but as I return to the roots of my soul, the circle is now complete."

Collecting songs from back when "country borrowed extensively from its across-the-railroad-tracks accomplice, the blues," he hit the studio with Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Byron House and Bela Fleck and came away with a low-key collection that perfectly captures the heart of the old-timey music that captured his heart.

Kaukonen appears tonight at Rosebud with Blue Country, beginning at 8. Tickets are $17 in advance; $19 at the door.

(Ed Masley, Post-Gazette Pop Music Critic)