651 ARTSblog

Highway 651 ARTS

Rambling, running, roving — travel is at the heart of the Mississippi Delta blues.   Spiritual escape is made possible through the playing of music, but sometimes, it’s the player that needs an outlet.   This was the case when McKinley Morganfield left the Stovall Plantation in 1943.  He made his break for Chicago, where he would rise to prominence with a new name, Muddy Waters, and a new style of electric blues.  Rolling Stone magazine, and the rock band, the Rolling Stones would later take their names from his lyric: “sho’nuff he’s a rollin’ stone.”

Hear it here: Muddy Waters / Rollin’  Stone

Fast forward to 2008 at 651 ARTS — this week in Brooklyn, the Mississippi Delta Heritage Project becomes a new stage for Delta musicians traveling in the footsteps of Muddy Waters.   Music, once again, is the cultural crossroads that leads, albeit momentarily, out of the Mississippi, Delta.

Jimmy “Duck” Holmes performs at the Kumble on June 5th

This week in Brooklyn, expect to hear music that rarely, if ever, has made it to New York, including Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, who like Muddy Waters, was recorded by Alan Lomax.   Jimmy “Duck” is the inheritor of a regional style called Bentonia blues.  He is the last in a long-line of players, including Skip (”I’d rather be the devil than to be that woman’s man”) James.

Another surprising style comes to Brooklyn from Sharde Thomas, who is a native of Senatobia, Mississippi and is the granddaughter of Otha Turner.   Fife and Drum music cropped up throughout isolate pockets of the Deep South, but Sharde is perhaps the last to carry the torch of this now world-famous spiritual-blues tradition.   It’s the sound of Eurpoean colonial marching music re-mixed (and re-mastered) by slaves and share-croppers throughout the South:

That’s a video we found recently (through http://www.livebluesworld.com/profile/MississippiDeltaHeritageProject) of Sharde leading the Rising Star of Fife and Drum Band.   They perform on June 1st at the Masonic Temple at 7pm in a double-bill with Brooklyn’s own Toshi Reagon.

Add comment May 30th, 2008

NY Times features Diane McIntyre and 651 ARTS

Diane McIntyre and Olu Dara appear on June 3rd & 4th at BRICstudio as part of the 651 ARTS Mississippi Delta Heritage Project

Last Sunday, the New York Times wrote a full spread on Diane McIntyre and the Mississppi Delta Heritage Project.   Read it HERE.

Add comment May 27th, 2008

Senatobia to Contonou

Sharde Thomas will travel from her hometown of Senatobia, Mississppi to play with The Rising Star Fife and Drum Band at the Masonic Temple in Ft. Greene on June 1st, 2008

The fife is a handmade instrument cut from natural cane – it’s roots music, literally.  Fife blowing is an African-American tradition that goes back to the Deep South during the Civil War (some even say to the Revolutionary War).  Slaves transformed marching band music into a hybrid — straight 4/4 European rhythms got bent into syncopated drumbeats.  In this new musical form, the fife’s melody projected high above the drums — it was the sound of a not-so-new Africa.  On a recent trip to Benin, 651 ARTS Project Manager, Wills Glasspiegel recorded this sound-clip (see below) in Cotonou, Benin.  Listen and you might hear the logic behind fife and drum music in Mississippi.

 whistle <— click here to hear it 

Photo by Drew Alt

Add comment May 26th, 2008