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Sharde Thomas
Sharde Thomas

Hot Weather and Hot Blues at the Mississippi Hill Country’s Biggest Weekend

Each year, on the last weekend in June, blues musician Kenny Brown and his wife Sarah host the North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic at Betty …

Preserving The Black Fife and Drum Culture in Coldwater

For 73 years, people in North Mississippi have been going to the Goat Picnic for goat sandwiches, music, dancing, and one of the rarest and …

The Last Black Fife and Drum Picnic in America

Fife and drum music was once found in Black communities throughout the South, but by 1970, it was found only in Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee, …

An Even Bigger Saturday at Coldwater’s GOAT Picnic

Although Saturday, August 25, 2018 was even hotter than the day before, the crowd that gathered in the late afternoon in Coldwater for the second …

Celebrating The Legacy of Otha Turner at Coldwater

Back in 1950, Othar Turner, of Gravel Springs, a few miles east of Senatobia in Mississippi’s Hill Country region, decided to hold a picnic for …

The Rising Star JuBallLee Takes Over Cherry Place At Waterford

Since the death of the legendary fife and drum musician Othar Turner, his granddaughter Sharde Thomas has done stellar work in preserving that musical tradition, …

R. L. Boyce, Cam Kimbrough, Joyce Jones and the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band at the Memphis Music and Heritage Festival

New Orleans’beloved Jazz Fest celebrates the wide diversity of New Orleans music, but the Memphis equivalent, the Beale Street Music Festival generally does not feature …

Gravel Springs Block Party and Day 2 of the Otha Turner Picnic

The second day of the annual Otha Turner Picnic was much more crowded than the first, as crowds came out to hear such artists as …