This evening from 6:30 till 9:00 at the Black Prairie Blues Museum in downtown West Point there will be a music event not just to hear but to experience. The museum, which is a work in progress, will be open from 6:30 to 7:15 with the exhibit “Juke Joint Photographs” by Birney Imes. Then at 7:30 the Mississippi State University Opera Department will sing the blues on Commerce Street, which will be closed off in front of the museum. To set the mood for what will be a grand blues performance by the MSU Opera Department, museum board member Deborah Mansfield has announced that “quintessential Wagnerian stereotype: Pseudo-Viking horned helmets” will be sold at the museum. It will be fun, the music will be delightful and it is free and open to the public.
As enjoyable as it will be, there is an educational component. You will get a taste of opera, a taste of the Blues and a taste of history. You see, the blues is Mississippi’s music and though African American in origin, it transcends race and culture. When most people think of the blues, they think of the Delta blues, the Memphis blues, the St. Louis blues or the Hill Country blues. There is also the Black Prairie blues. The old Black Prairie of Mississippi and Alabama has blues roots as deep if not deeper than anywhere else.
The Black Prairie was named after its fertile black soil. It runs in a narrow crescent shape from northeast Mississippi into south central Alabama. It was settled by Euro-Americans between 1816 and 1835 after the taking of the homeland of the Creek, Choctaw and Chickasaw nations. The enslaved people that were brought to farm the rich, dark land carried with them their musical heritage from Africa.
Blues is a music with a foundation in the work chants and hard times experienced by laborers on plantations and steamboats and the Black Prairie was the original cotton and corn belt of the south. Through the middle of it flowed the Alabama, Warrior and Tombigbee Rivers. Just as laborers in the prairie cotton fields had work chants, so did the deck hands on steamboats that plied the rivers. It was hard work and a hard life but music helped.
After emancipation, the former enslaved people mostly became tenant farmers and their hard life and music continued. Their field work chants, steamboat chants and mournful ballads merged into the blues.
It is a musical tradition predating that of the Delta, though it is often considered Delta Blues. It is even sometimes referred to as Hill Country blues, though the hill country of northeast Mississippi lacked the large farms and African American population of the prairie.
Among the notable musicians of the prairie are Blind Ben Covington who first recorded in 1929 and was not blind. Lucille Bogan (1897-1948) is considered to have, with Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, one of the greatest female blues voices of all time. Howlin’ Wolf (1910-1976), though a bluesman, is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Big Joe Williams (1903-1982) was born in Crawford and has been called “king of the nine-string guitar.” Bukka White’s (1906/09-1977) music influenced both Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin. Willie King (1943-2009) also was an internationally known bluesman, who won many national awards and was even the subject of a Dutch documentary. The musical heritage of the Black Prairie is the Blues.
In 2014 the Prairie Belt Blues Foundation which operates the museum was founded as a 501(c)3 nonprofit foundation to assume the mission and projects of the Howlin’ Wolf Blues Society.
The new foundation was established with Milton Sundbeck as its first president and through his leadership, commitment, and generosity the foundation obtained and is restoring the historic over a hundred year old Bank of West Point building in downtown West Point, Mississippi, as the Black Prairie Blues Museum. The foundation expanded its focus from principally promoting the legacy of Howlin’ Wolf and a few area blues musicians to a celebration of the heritage of the many blues musicians of the old Black Prairie Region of Mississippi and Alabama.
In furtherance of its mission to celebrate and promote the heritage of the blues, the foundation has used the museum as a venue for performances of blues music and for blues related educational activities for young people. The museum exhibits are in the formative stage while curator Jeremy Klutts organizes its collections and the board works with Museum Arts of Dallas Texas on exhibit design and layout. However, the creative leadership of Deborah Mansfield has enabled the interior of the museum to be used for community events promoting blues heritage for young and old alike as design plans progress. Though the permanent exhibits are not yet in place the Black Prairie Blues Museum often hosts exhibits and is a living museum promoting the legacy of the blues musicians of the old Black Prairie. It is in this vein that the museum has partnered with the MSU Opera Department in this merging of blues and opera. I already have my Wagnerian horned Viking helmet and can’t wait for tonight.
Rufus Ward is a local historian.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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