Deers R Us by The Deer Clan Singers   The Deer Clan Singers are a family of the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina led by Dave Locklear, Mark Deese, Pura Fe, and Chad Locklear who play complicated harmonies that are distinctive in the Indian genre. Sometimes you never know where you’re going to find commonalities. […]

On March 3rd, 2017 Our Living Past, Music Maker’s photography exhibit featuring 25 photos of Southern musicians and scenes, will be on display at the Alexandria Museum of Art in Alexandria, Louisiana. Timothy Duffy, founder of Music Maker Relief Foundation and photographer behind the images in Our Living Past has been working to empower Southern […]

Following in a line of black country singers that include Charley Pride, Linda Martell, Ray Charles and more recently Darius Rucker, Sam Frazier, Jr. sings the sweet songs that have defined country music.  He sings the blues and croons plaintive melodies on his trusted harmonica.  Out of the backwoods of Alabama, Sam has been a […]

  I had the same conversation over and over again when I was conducting research for my doctoral dissertation on contemporary black gospel music. When I spoke to older churchgoers—dozens of them, in central North Carolina and Houston, Texas—they always told me the same thing. It went something like this: “Contemporary gospel is OK. It’s […]

Many Americans are uncomfortable with the very idea of black people living in the rural South. “Black” plus “rural,” for them, evokes images of slavery and of the “Strange Fruit” hanging from Southern trees that Billie Holiday so hauntingly sang about. This discomfort is reflected in the mass media’s tacit erasure of anything connecting black […]