Melanie Young feels as though she’s come home since she’s been hired as the new publication manager of Living Blues magazine. She first began working with the magazine in 2009 as the circulation manager, and also had an editorial internship with the publication. Since then, she’s been a contributing writer for Living Blues and even wrote her Southern Studies master’s thesis on the magazine in 2012.
Blues musician Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton was in town a few weeks ago to play a concert as part of the World Championship Old Time Piano Playing Contest, and Southern Studies graduate student Chris Colbeck sat down with Paxton to talk about southern music. Watch the interview below.
Shake ‘Em on Down: The Blues According to Fred McDowell, a SouthDocs film by Joe York and Scott Barretta, has been selected as a 2016 Southern Circuit film.
Symposium Speaker Karl Hagstrom Miller on Research Inspiration, Segregating Sound, and Multidisciplinarity Southern Studies graduate student Chris Colbeck interviewed Music of the South Symposium speaker Karl Hagstrom Miller on April 6, 2016. Chris, whose own thesis project is on music, interviewed Miller as part of a series of Southern Documentary Project interviews with Center speakers. …
Music of the South Symposium:Defining and Presenting Tradition in Southern Music – Wednesday, April 6, 2016 This spring’s Music of the South Symposium will investigate the creation and performance of the South’s various traditional music forms. The one-day symposium, “Defining and Presenting Traditional Music,” sponsored by the Center, Living Blues magazine, and the Blues Archive, …
by Kelley Norris Scott Barretta, writer and researcher for the Mississippi Blues Trail and an adjunct instructor in sociology and anthropology at the University of Mississippi, has lived in the state for sixteen years, but his blues journey began long before his arrival here. A multidecade musical odyssey has led Barretta to receiving the Mississippi …
Here, second year graduate student Mary Blessey shares an audio project and original photographs from the 2015 3rd Eye Music Festival in Jackson, MS.
The Center for the Study of Southern Culture seeks applicants for the position of Manager of Publications at Living Blues magazine.
New York native Adam Gussow arrived on a hot and humid University of Mississippi campus in August of 2002, harmonica in hand. The Center for Study of Southern Culture was in need of a blues expert at the time, and he was exactly what they were looking for. Gussow said moving from Vassar College in New York state to small-town Mississippi was a big transition, but it was an ideal one.
In a cultural climate based on the superficial, one has to wonder how much deeper the annual Elvis Death Day observances go than mere tradition and habit. Can such events be mined for anything worth knowing about the world we live in today? Was there more to be learned from Death Day ten years ago? Twenty years ago? Thirty? Those might be the most interesting questions of all to ask about what happens in Memphis on August 15.