Roy Justice
Roy has been bringing American History to life through storytelling and music since 1985. He is a 1976 graduate of Mansfield University, Mansfield, PA with a B.A. Degree in Music, is 55 years old, and is a resident of Chambersburg, PA.
Born and raised in the New York City suburb of Massapequa, Long Island, Roy comes by his storytelling and musicianship honestly. His paternal great-grandmother was a well-known storyteller in North Carolina and he is a distant cousin to the highly regarded Civil War poet and musician Sydney Lanier.
When he is not performing, Roy is teaching voice and beginner guitar at Cumberland Valley School of Music in Chambersburg, PA.
Roy performs regionally and has appeared in festival events in France and Italy and has represented the Lehigh Valley (PA) and the United States in an international Sister Cities Festival in Germany. He is a featured Canal musician/historian in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and has appeared at many regional fairs and festivals. Of all of the performances that he feels privileged to present, Roy most enjoys bringing his unique method of exploring history to Elementary Schools!
“For me, the most gratifying and exciting aspect of doing these programs is watching a child’s expression change as they figure out the answer to a question based on the information that they are listening to! When you can bring someone to ‘figure out’ something within themselves, they gain something that memorization of material can not achieve. It’s a character building process as well as being fun and informative!”
For those of you who are not yet familiar with Roy’s work as the Time Traveling Minstrel, he combines storytelling, music, and history to present interactive (participatory) programs on a variety of subjects dealing with our Nation’s past. Beginning each program by sounding a conch shell and explaining its importance to the residents of 19th Century America, he then takes his audience on a journey through a segment of history! Telling the stories of real and imagined folk heroes, singing songs from our past, using thought provoking questions, and having children from the audience actively participate in the program, Roy illustrates the life and times of America’s past generations! (“History is about people, not just dates and places in a book!”) Mr. Justice believes that understanding the past can help to create a more productive future and that involving people on a physical and active mental level has more of a lasting impact than one would have if reading alone or watching television.