Delta Center celebrates French connection

The Delta Center for Culture and Learning helped arrange the “French Connection" Blues Experience for a group of blues enthusiasts from France.

The Route 66 Association of France visited the Cleveland community Oct. 15 to experience authentic blues culture in the Mississippi Delta. Cleveland was one of several stops the group made as part of a three-week music heritage tour from Chicago to New Orleans.

The Delta Center for Culture and Learning coordinated the visit in partnership with Cleveland Tourism and Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art in Clarksdale, calling it the “French Connection” Blues Experience.

“We wanted to give our French visitors a multifaceted experience that reflects the rich and diverse culture that lives within our region, which is the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area,” said Dr. Rolando Herts, director of the DCCL. “They saw the inside of our region’s most famous juke joint, Po Monkey’s. They heard blues played by famous regionally-based musicians, including Kingfish from Clarksdale and Pat Thomas from Leland. They had a Delta barbecue dinner at Sweets in downtown Cleveland. Several of them embraced our team at the end of the night, saying how much they loved all of it. And it all happened through community partnerships and collaboration.”

The evening began at Sweets BBQ Kitchen, a Delta-themed establishment decorated with local artwork by Melvin Kinney that pays homage to the region’s blues culture. Kingfish, a world-renowned 15-year-old blues prodigy, played and sang while members of Route 66 dined, danced and took photographs of their vibrant surroundings.

After dinner, the group made a pilgrimage to Po Monkey’s Lounge in Merigold, considered one of the last operating rural juke joints in the South. While there, they listened to folk blues artist Pat Thomas, who is featured in Roger Stolle’s The Hidden History of Mississippi Blues. The evening ended with a high-energy performance from Anthony “Big A” Sherrod & Blues Allstars, as seen in the documentary film “We Juke It Up In Here.” Big A staged a grand finale by inviting one of the Route 66 travelers to lead a show-stopping rendition of Little Milton’s “The Blues is Alright.”

The Route 66 Association of France has a significant connection with the Mississippi Delta. Robert Mauries, the organizer of the tour group and president of the Cahors Blues Festival, worked with the Mississippi Blues Commission to install a Mississippi Blues Trail marker in Cahors, France. According to the marker, French enthusiasts spurred international interest in African American music by releasing records, arranging tours and conducting pioneering research on jazz and blues throughout the 20th Century. The Cahors Blues Festival, established in 1982, has built upon this long tradition through its presentation of hundreds of musicians, including many from the state of Mississippi.

Cahors, France has one of two Mississippi Blues Trail markers currently located outside of the U.S. The second marker is located in Notodden, Norway.

Geography teachers tour National Heritage Area

The Delta Center for Culture and Learning recently provided a tour to teachers from the National Conference of Geography Educators.

The Delta Center for Culture and Learning recently assisted the National Conference of Geography Educators by providing a heritage tour of the central Mississippi Delta.

The geography teachers were attending the annual meeting of their Memphis conference and rode to the Delta on a coach bus. Delta Center’s Lee Aylward led the tour and talked to the group about the Delta’s history and culture. The teachers visited Cleveland, Ruleville, Merigold and Mound Bayou before returning to Memphis.

Participants came from across the U.S. and Canada, where the will return to their classrooms and teach about the Delta.

First Tuesday program focuses on heritage

Delta State University’s Department of Art and The Delta Center for Culture and Learning will sponsor a First Tuesday program presented by Dr Luther Brown on Jan. 28 from 12:10-1:00 p.m. in the Wright Art Gallery. The program will focus on the Mississippi National Heritage Area.

The Mississippi National Heritage Area was created by Congress in March of 2009 to “foster partnerships and educational opportunities that enhance, preserve and promote the heritage of the Mississippi Delta.”

In 2012, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area as a National Treasure in recognition of the Delta’s impact on the nation. The Delta area is where the blues were born, where the Civil Rights movement overturned segregation, where the introduction of high tech farming sparked the Great Migration, where the siege of Vicksburg marked a turning point in the Civil War and where literary greats such as Tennessee Williams and Eudora Welty told the world about the Delta through their writing.

Dr. Brown is a well-known and engaging speaker who is the founding director of The Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University. He has appeared on Good Morning America, Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s Walt Grayson’s Mississippi Roads, the Golf Channel’s Golf with Style Mississippi, the History Channel’s Mississippi and two Japanese television programs. He also has presented heritage tours for the Culinary Institute of America, Living Blues Magazine, the Oxford Conference for the Book and numerous international groups.

First Tuesday is free and open to the public. Coffee will be served and brown bag lunches are welcomed.

First Tuesday is sponsored by the Art Department and the First Tuesday Committee. Scheduled for the first Tuesday of each month during fall and spring semesters from 12:10-1:00 p.m., First Tuesday features lectures, readings and presentations representing diverse perspectives in the arts and humanities. For more information, please call 662-846-4720

Californians visit the Delta National Heritage Area

The Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State recently introduced 37 visitors from San Francisco to the Delta’s rich cultural heritage on a tour called Jews, Blues and Jazz.

The group flew from California to Memphis, traveled through the Delta on their way to Natchez and then New Orleans before heading home. It was led by Fred Rosenbaum, an educator and historian and founding director of Lehrhaus Judaica. He was formerly on the faculty at the University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.

Rosenbaum was assisted by his colleague, Peretz Wolf-Prusan, who served for 20 years at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco before assuming his current position as rabbi and senior educator for Lehrhaus Judaica in October 2010. The group learned about the Delta Center through The Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life in Jackson. The institute is a group that the Delta Center has worked with several times in the past.

The promotional materials for the tour described the experience as follows: “In the land of bagels and grits, we will explore Jewish Life in the Deep South: its rich history from colonial times, the war between the states, Civil Rights, and the new South. We will enjoy the music, food and hospitality that makes the Delta home sweet home to a historic Jewish community.”