Mississippi — the “birthplace of the blues” — has produced more Grammy winning musicians than the next five states combined.
This according to Emily Havens, executive director of the GRAMMY Museum Mississippi that opened its doors last March. Havens visited the Columbus Exchange Club at Lion Hills Center Thursday to tell club members about the Cleveland, Mississippi-based museum and invite them to visit.
The 28,000 square-foot museum is the world’s second Grammy museum and the most technologically advanced music museum in the world, Havens said. It’s already had nearly 25,000 visitors from 44 states and 24 countries. Of the visitors, about 4,500 are students.
While the museum serves as a tribute to all Grammy winners, Havens said it has a special emphasis on Mississippi musicians. She hopes the museum will promote tourism to the state and inspire locals to pursue music careers.
“We hope to help bridge the gap in music and arts education,” she said. “We want to be a place where — if it’s just a field trip, if it’s instrument lessons, workshops, things like that — we can be that catalyst that helps someone decide that they want to be in music, they want to further their experience in instruments, music management, recording, lighting, all those things that we offer in the museum.”
More than half the museum’s exhibits are interactive, Havens said. They include costumes from Taylor Swift and Barbara Streisand to Daft Punk, iconic instruments from legendary musicians like Johnny Cash, an exhibit promoting “landmark moments” in music history and an exhibit where visitors can write and produce their own songs.
“This museum is not, ‘Don’t touch, don’t touch,'” Havens said. “We want you to touch, we want you to feel, we want you to experience, enjoy. And hopefully it’s that spark that moves you into the music career and then keeps your business in Mississippi.”
Havens’ favorite exhibit is Mono to Surround, a room that lets visitors listen to a current song as it would sound played on various devices throughout history, from gramophones and vinyl to surround sound.
“Can you even think of a way that children or grandchildren today would even know what a wax cylinder was?” Havens said. “And certainly hear a song they’re interested in played on one and what it would sound like?”
For more information on the museum, visit www.grammymuseumms.org.
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