Mississippi's "Blues Trail"

Tunica, Mississippi roadside marker
for the great blues musician Son House
(Image: pastblues.com)

From my high school days until now, I've listened to the blues. In the early days of my lifelong infatuation with the sound, I collected some original recordings and understood some of the nuances between regional styles as well as those of individual performers. Over the years, I've visited Tennessee and Louisiana, but never had the opportunity to enjoy any musical tourism. This morning, I read a Financial Times piece on Mississippi's "Blues Trail" and began to consider a trip to visit the home of the Delta Blues. (Yes, the FT is an unlikely venue for this sort of topic.)

The article interviews Mississippi officials who have finally grasped the cultural and economic benefits of promoting the state's rich musical heritage. The best line in the story was a quote from Mississippi tourism director Malcolm White:

There's an old line that preservationists use, that poverty is the friend of preservation, which means that if you are so poor you don't tear down your old buildings, you get to use them again.

The larger point of the Financial Times piece was Mississippi's intent to preserve and relay the story of its influential musical patrimony on its own terms. That is a far better choice than a Ken Burns adaptation presented by PBS. As Malcolm White pointed out:

Mississippi has always allowed other people to tell our story and, quite frankly, they always get it wrong. I think that's the story that we have to tell, is that we found a new economy and lo and behold it's the story of who we are. That we don't have to depend totally on someone bringing a factory or some sort of new job to us; that we can create this ourselves and do it by telling our story and inviting people to come and to experience the telling.

Mississippi hopes to extend this cultural assertion by creating trails for country music and for the Civil Rights movement.