Preplanned Dolly Parton event becomes tribute
Last Friday, on Sept. 25, now known as Dolly Parton Day, art and music came together at the Johnson Center for the Arts when a simple event became so much more: A gathering for Troy community members to celebrate the life and influence of the country music icon.
The Johnson Center partnered with Troy University’s POPulus ensemble for a Dolly Parton-themed event featuring arts and crafts alongside live performances of the singer’s music.
For POPulus member Xavier Brooks, performing Parton’s music offered the group a chance to recognize an artist whose influence extended across generations of performers.
“Doing a tribute to her shows how much she means to us as performers,” Brooks said.
POPulus is a Troy University performance ensemble whose students perform music across several genres, including rock, country and bluegrass. Brooks said the group also records covers and original music, giving its members opportunities to share their work with audiences beyond campus.
For Brooks, the ability to connect with others is one of music’s most important qualities.
“Music brings people together unlike anything else,” Brooks said. “It’s universal. It just brings people together.”
Parton’s career offered another lesson for Brooks as a developing performer: the importance of creating an identity audiences remember.
“She has an image to her that’s like nothing else,” Brooks said. “As artists, we want to leave an image and an iconic presence.”
He said Parton serves as an example of an artist leaving a mark that cannot simply be recreated by someone else.
The collaboration with POPulus was not originally part of the Johnson Center’s plans for the event.
Andrea Pack, executive director of the Johnson Center for the Arts, said the center had already planned its Dolly Parton-themed arts and crafts event before Parton’s death.
“We actually planned this Dolly Parton event before she passed,” Pack said. “The day before, I had ordered all the supplies and posted it on Facebook, and then the following day she passed.”
Rather than canceling the event, the center decided to continue with it as a tribute.
At the same time, Pack said members of POPulus were looking for their own way to honor Parton and contacted the center.
The resulting event, “9/25: 5 to 9,” referenced Parton’s song “9 to 5” through both its Sept. 25 date and its 5 to 9 p.m. time.
While Parton became one of country music’s most recognizable figures, Pack said her influence reached people outside the genre as well.
Pack said her own children received books through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a program that provides books to young children.
“[The program] was a huge part of my children’s lives,” Pack said. “Literacy was important to me.”
For Pack, Parton’s work outside of entertainment is an important part of the legacy she left behind.
“I just love her for being such a philanthropist and for being beyond herself and thinking about others in her community,” Pack said.
That combination of music, art and community also fit the mission of the Johnson Center.
“Whatever your job is, people love to create,” Pack said. “They love to sing, they love to dance, they love to paint, they love to film videos. They just love to create.”
Through their collaboration and an unusual coincidence, the Johnson Center and POPulus brought community members together to remember Parton and her influence that extended far beyond the stage.
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