Throughout Appalachian history, mountain residents have turned to music to tell their stories, to provide comfort in times of need, and to protest unconscionable exploitation by various industries, primarily coal companies. In Kathy Mattea’s latest recording (2008), simply titled Coal and produced by her own record label, Captain Potato Records, the talented Grammy Award winner resurrects solid classics from a long musical tradition that includes the likes of singers/songwriters Jean Ritchie, Billy Edd Wheeler, Hazel Dickens, and Si Kahn.

In a National Public Radio interview on “Living on Earth,” Mattea revealed her goal for the album—namely, to tell the story of coal in Appalachia and to “open a window” for outsiders to access that story. Even those completely unaware of Appalachia’s mining history will be educated by Mattea’s beautifully haunting interpretation of the lyrics. And just a quick glance at the song titles provides listeners insight into the region’s coal narrative.

Jean Ritchie’s “The L & N Don’t Stop Here Anymore” is the first track, which enables Mattea to set the tone for the album. While Hazard, Kentucky, serves as the setting for this song, the economic fallout from the coal bust could be set in any other Appalachian town dependent upon coal extraction, a dependence very intentionally crafted by the company. Listeners come to appreciate the father’s desire to send his child to school, not the mines, despite the child’s erroneous belief that the father possesses enough scrip, or phony money, to buy the company store. Before the mid-20th century, most miners were not paid in American currency, thereby holding them in constant debt to the company, which charged exorbitant prices on basic goods. The song contains a tragic irony, however. Even though the now grown child understands the exploitation and dangers of mining, the storyteller laments the empty train cars sitting idle and rusted on the tracks, a clear symbol of poverty that the father embodies through his own empty pockets and a clean white face.

Mattea digs deep into her past to sing these lines, as well as all the lyrics on the album, with an authenticity that leaves listeners convinced of her knowledge of such economic boom or bust, of hardship and struggle. Both of Mattea’s grandfathers were miners; her mother worked for the local UMWA. Sadly she recalls the infamous Farmington, West Virginia, mine disaster of 1968, a tragedy that killed 78 miners and occurred near her hometown when she was only 9 years old. As Mattea explains on her Web site, “I’m breathing something into the song, collaborating with the writers on bringing something forth.” But, she says, these songs had to go beyond that. “With these songs, it’s not about how you sound, it’s about sheer communication and expression, and a way to give voice to someone else’s life experiences. It’s being a voice for a whole group of people, a place, a way of life. And that’s a sacred use of music.”

Mattea’s choice of fellow West Virginian Hazel Dickens’s “Black Lung” for the final track demonstrates this sense of responsibility. In the 2001 Appalshop documentary, Hazel Dickens: It’s Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song, produced by Mimi Pickering, Dickens explains that she wrote the song for her brother, to “give him a voice in this world” because he died a horrible, suffocating death that left him as poor as when he started working in the mines.  Though it’s hard to measure up to Hazel Dickens, especially with her unique gritty, soulful vocals, Mattea delivers an a cappella recording that honors the original intention of the song. By channeling her own blood-born connection to coal, Mattea indeed uses her music for sacred purposes.

Importantly, too, as Mattea promotes Coal and its songs of the early and mid-20th century, she is calling attention to a contemporary mining practice known as mountaintop removal. Occurring throughout Central Appalachia, with Mattea’s home state of West Virginia leading the pack, this form of strip mining involves the detonation of explosives that level entire mountaintops, leaving the natural habitat, as well as the cultural and social environment, devastated.

Not only, then, does Mattea pay homage to her mining heritage in this captivating album, she has utilized it as a platform to bring international awareness to a type of 21st century mining destroying her mountain home. And in true Appalachian fashion, she exhibits the region’s long-standing tradition of resistance to exploitation, in whatever form it takes. Without a doubt, Mattea has contributed to the annals of Appalachian protest music and exemplifies the model mountain resident filled with pride in her rich culture.

Theresa L. Burriss is a music enthusiast as well as an Assistant Professor of English and Appalachian Studies at Radford University.