The Orpheus Parade on Lundi Gras in New Orleans
Lundi Gras is really a holiday in New Orleans, with schools and some businesses closed, and a lot of people off work. My friend Darren …
Drums
A Hot Drum Shed on a Cold Night in South Memphis
Drum practice can be noisy, and in the early days of young people learning to play, whether snare drum or the set, parents demanded that …
A Delta Journey: A Chilly Homecoming in Grambling
When I woke up in West Monroe, the first thing I noticed was how extremely chilly it was, and that didn’t improve all that much …
The Human Jukebox and the Mighty Sound of the South Fight It Out in Memphis
The historically-Black college band tradition of the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) and the corps-style tradition of the University of Memphis are vastly different, and while …
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, …
Haute Cuisine and Hill Country Blues at Home Place Pastures in Como
Home Place Pastures was originally founded in 1869 or 1871, depending on the source, as a cotton plantation in the wilderness east of the railroad …
Mayor Jane Rule Throws a Birthday Party For David Katznelson With Blues and Fife and Drum
San Francisco-based David Katznelson is the owner of Birdman Records, a really cool group of blues and roots labels, which includes subsidiary labels Birdmanophone and …
Breakfast, Worship And Black History at Salem Missionary Baptist Church at Mason, Tennessee
A while back, I had crossed paths on Facebook with the Rev. T. Ray Greer, pastor of Salem Missionary Baptist Church in the countryside just …
A Day in Lauderdale County, Tennessee
Lauderdale County, Tennessee, and its county seat of Ripley have a significant blues tradition. Petey Wheatstraw was from Ripley, and Noah Lewis and John Henry …
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 …