Highway 61 by Pat Thomas 

This recording of Highway 61 was made in a plantation graveyard with the Delta blues musician and part-time grave digger, Pat Thomas.   Pat is the son of Son Thomas, the famous bluesman first recorded by Bill Ferris in the 1960s.   The song Pat is singing is called Highway 61.  It’s a standard among musicians, and was made famous by Bob Dylan on his album Highway 61 Revisited.

Often known as the Blues Highway because of the path it cuts through the Delta, Highway 61 parallels the Mississppi River and the Illinois Central Railroad.  During the Great Migration, Highway 61 was the esape route for thousands of unemployed Mississippians in search of a new life in Chicago.

“Highway 61,” they sing “is the longest road I know.  Goes from Chicago all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.”

Now Highway 61 runs by Brooklyn’s door::  Terry “Harmonica” Bean is at Franks on 6/4, Robert Belfour is at Frank’s on 6/5, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes is at the Kumble Theater on 6/5, and Corey Harris is at the Kumble on 6/6.   More info and more shows are listed here: www.651arts.org.

Field recording by Wills Glasspiegel

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.

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

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

On Sunday, June 1, New York’s Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely are performing on a double-bill with blues great Otha Turner’s granddaughter - Sharde Thomas and the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band at Brooklyn’s Masonic Temple in Ft. Greene. 14 year-old Sharde took over leadership of the band when Otha died in 2003. She’s now 18 and traveling all over the world playing this amazing music—and making it her own.
Check out this video (Sharde was about 5 years old here)  to get a small taste of what we’re talking about!
 

 

Variety review here

Check out this amazing interview with magnificent dancer/choreographer, Nora Chipaumire:  NPR interview/Chipaumire

Some of you may have been lucky enough to have seen her breathtaking performances at 651 ARTS’ Salon 651 Series  at BRICstudios last spring. If you haven’t seen her perform, now you have another chance! Chipaumire’s new piece is now on tour!
Chimurenga, is a multi-media dance memoir - an unblinking confrontation with personal experiences growing up during Zimbabwe’s current political, social, economic and racial difficulties. For more info, click here.