Several Appalachian musicians obtained renown during the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, including Jean Ritchie, Roscoe Holcomb, Ola Belle Reed, Lily May Ledford, Hedy West and Doc Watson.

Country and bluegrass artists such as Loretta Lynn, Roy Acuff, Dolly Parton, Earl Scruggs, Chet Atkins, The Stanley Brothers and Don Reno were heavily influenced by traditional Appalachian music.

[12] According to the musicologist Cecil Sharp the ballads of Appalachia, including their melodies, were generally most similar to those of "the North of England, or to the Lowlands, rather than the Highlands, of Scotland, as the country from which they [the people] originally migrated.

"[13] Several Appalachian fiddle tunes have origins in Gaelic-speaking regions of Ireland and Scotland, for example "Leather Britches", based on "Lord MacDonald's Reel".

The style of the 18th century Scottish fiddler Niel Gow, which involved a powerful and rhythmic short bow sawstroke technique, is said to have become the foundation of Appalachian fiddling.

[16] The "Appalachian" or "mountain" dulcimer, thought to have been a modification of a Germanic instrument such as the scheitholt, (or possibly the Norwegian langeleik or the French épinette des Vosges) emerged in Southwest Pennsylvania and Northwest Virginia in the 19th century.

In the early 20th century, settlement schools in Kentucky taught the fretted dulcimer to students, helping spread its popularity in the region.

[18] Vocal feathering, practiced by singers including Doug Wallin and described as a "half-yodel",[19] (or more accurately, according to Judith McCulloh, as 'A sudden or forceful raising of the soft palate against the back wall of the throat and/or a sudden closing of the glottis at the very end of a given note, generally accompanied by a rise in pitch'),[20] may also be Germanic in origin, or alternatively African.

[1] New World ballads popular among Appalachian musicians included "Omie Wise", "Wreck of the Old 97", "Man of Constant Sorrow", and "John Hardy".

[28] Many ballad singers, such as Texas Gladden, acquired what is referred to as the "High Lonesome Sound", a strident, nasalized vocal timbre,[29] often with an unmetered rhythm and the use of gapped (i.e. pentatonic) scales.

[citation needed] Instruments such as the guitar, mandolin, and autoharp became popular in Appalachia in the late 19th century as a result of mail order catalogs.

The area covered by Niles in his collecting days, according to the map in the Ballad Book, was bounded roughly by Tazewell, Virginia; south to Boone and Saluda, North Carolina and Greenville, South Carolina; west to Chickamauga, Georgia; north through Chattanooga and Dayton, Tennessee to Somerset, Kentucky; northwest to Bardstown, Frankfort, and Lexington, Kentucky; east to the West Virginia border, and back down to Tazewell, thus covering areas of the Smokies, the Cumberland Plateau, Upper Tennessee Valley, and the Lookout Mountain region.

[34] In May 1916, the soprano Loraine Wyman and her pianist colleague Howard Brockway visited the Appalachians in eastern Kentucky, in a 300-mile walking trek to gather folk songs.

They took their harvest back to New York, where they continued, with great success, their ongoing efforts in performing traditional folk songs to urban audiences.

[37] The work of Sharp and Karpeles confirmed what many folklorists had suspected – the remote valleys and hollows of the Appalachian Mountains were a vast repository of older forms of music.

[39] The commercial success of the Atlanta sessions prompted OKeh to seek out other musicians from the region, including Henry Whitter, who was recorded in New York City in 1924.

The following year, Peer recorded a North Carolina string band fronted by Al Hopkins that called themselves "a bunch of hillbillies".

[25] In the 1930s, radio programs such as the Grand Ole Opry kept interest in Appalachian music alive, and collectors such as musicologist Alan Lomax continued to make field recordings in the region throughout the 1940s.

In 1952, Folkways Records released the landmark Anthology of American Folk Music, which had been compiled by ethnomusicologist Harry Smith, and contained tracks from Appalachian musicians such as Clarence Ashley, Dock Boggs, and G. B. Grayson.

Urban folk enthusiasts such as New Lost City Ramblers bandmates Mike Seeger and John Cohen and producer Ralph Rinzler traveled to remote sections of Appalachia to conduct field recordings.

Films such as Cohen's High Lonesome Sound – the subject of which was Kentucky banjoist and ballad singer Roscoe Holcomb – helped give enthusiasts a sense of what it was like to see Appalachian musicians perform.

Mine labor strife in West Virginia in 1914 and the 1931 Harlan County War in Kentucky produced songs such as Ralph Chaplin's "Solidarity Forever" and Florence Reece's "Which Side Are You On?"

[41] The most commercially successful Appalachian mining song is Merle Travis' "Sixteen Tons", which has been recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford, Johnny Cash, and dozens of other artists.

The popularity of such musicians as the Carter Family, who first recorded at the sessions, proved to industry executives that there was a market for "mountain" or "hillbilly" music.

In the late 1980s, artists such as Dolly Parton, Ricky Skaggs, and Dwight Yoakam helped to bring traditional Appalachian influences back to country music.

[38] Bluegrass developed in the 1940s from a mixture of several types of music, including old-time, country, and blues, but particularly mountain string bands, which in turn evolved from banjo-and-fiddle outfits.

Bluegrass quickly grew in popularity among numerous musicians in Appalachia, including the Stanley Brothers, the Osborne Brothers, and Jimmy Martin, and although it was influenced by various music forms from inside and outside the region (Monroe himself was from Western Kentucky), it is often associated with Appalachia and performed alongside old-time and traditional music at Appalachian folk festivals.

Grateful Dead member Jerry Garcia frequently performed Appalachian songs such as "Shady Grove" and "Wind and Rain", and said he had learned the clawhammer banjo style from "listening to Clarence Ashley".

In the early 21st century, the motion picture O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and to a lesser extent Songcatcher and Cold Mountain, generated renewed mainstream interest in traditional Appalachian music.

[38] For five days during the first week of August each year, the Appalachian String Band Music Festival[50] is held in Clifftop, West Virginia.