Interview Archive for December, 2009

William Ferris didn’t have to go far to ignite a distinguished career as a chronicler and scholar (and friend) of people and ways of life ignored by the prevailing larger culture. He talked and listened to the destitute black people who lived all around him on his family farm in the sticks outside of Vicksburg. Many of these same people can be experienced in his new book GIVE MY POOR HEART EASE: VOICES OF THE MISSISSIPPI BLUES, which consists of oral histories conducted by Dr. Ferris in the 1960s and '70s.

People like Harold Ott are indispensable to a community's culture—to a community's legacy. What's a community? That's us! Through his music work, Harold Ott provides reminders of who "we" were and thus, of course, who we are—not an irrelevant consideration. Harold's weapon of choice is Arkansas garage & psychedelic rock circa the 1960s/early 1970s. There are clues to our current identity in this music. Also: this music reminds us that anything is possible; "art" is not a genre; it's a door.