Details

Item details

Date

Saturday, February 6, 2021 9:30PM

Location

The Appel Room

Name

Bill Ferris: Voices of Mississippi

Description

"William Ferris sought to modernize the region’s everyday culture, placing it at the same table as the region’s modernist heritage… In Ferris’ world, William Faulkner and Bobby Rush sit comfortably side by side.”

Voices of Mississippi is a new multimedia event celebrating the music, art, and storytelling traditions of the people of Mississippi. Based on the 2019 double-Grammy Award–winning Voices of Mississippi: Artists and Musicians Documented by William Ferris, the program features live musical performances integrated with film, audio recordings, and rare photographs captured by folklorist William Ferris, who will serve as host for the evening.

A historian with a proudly egalitarian lens, Ferris studied Mississippi as a slice of humanity in which everyone and everything was interconnected—and in which the beating heart of broader cultural traditions could be found in some of the most overlooked figures and places. From the 1960s through the 1990s, Ferris captured an invaluable archive of cultural and musical treasures, and much of that art and humanity will be shared in this unique concert experience.

With a broad array of blues, folk, gospel music, and spoken-word storytelling, Voices of Mississippi paints a powerful picture of a unique time and place that remains an essential piece of the American cultural fabric.