Word: mississippi
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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They are the stars of River of Song: A Musical Journey down the Mississippi, an ambitious four-hour, four-part documentary series that begins airing on PBS stations this month (check local listings). The series, written by Elijah Wald, a music critic for the Boston Globe, and directed by Boston-based filmmaker John Junkerman, is a multimedia event: there's a corresponding seven-hour, seven-part series airing on Public Radio International; a 36-song, two-CD sound track (Smithsonian Folkways); and a 352-page companion book (St. Martin's). But the purpose of each is singularly focused: to document...
...documentary broccoli. The viewer isn't assailed with dates and events, fussy terminology and black-and-white daguerreotypes with accompanying narration by overly earnest Hollywood actors. The story is told through a series of punchy personal portraits of the musicians who live in the cities and towns along the Mississippi, places like Davenport, Iowa, and Festus, Mo. We get to know these musicians not as representatives of trends and genres but as regular folks trying to make a living and a little music as well. We see them sweating through performances, straightening their hair with hot combs in their kitchens...
...musicians here are generally not superstars, although such nationally known acts as Soul Asylum and the Mississippi Mass Choir do make appearances. And a few of the performers featured deserve a shot on Leno or Conan O'Brien, chief among them the spirited New Orleans hip-hop brass band Soul Rebels. Most of the acts on River of Song, however, seem content with local renown. They display a commitment that's deeper than celebrity: for them, music isn't simply a means to acquire wealth or fame; it's a method of preserving traditions and a way of life...
...series' final scene is its saddest and wisest. On Delacroix Island, at the mouth of the Mississippi, we meet Irvan and Allen Perez, two cousins who belong to the Islenos, a Spanish-speaking people who first settled in Louisiana 200 years ago. The Perezes are fishermen. As they work, they sing slow, bittersweet a cappella songs called decimas--10-stanza numbers, mostly in Spanish, that tell the stories of their lives and communities. They sing of shrimp boats and muskrat trappers, bad weather and home mortgages. Their voices are piercing and pure. Allen sings...
Dershowitz writes: "At a rally to support the Confederate battle flag in Mississippi at which CCC members handed out Confederate flags, white supremacist Richard Barrett said that the Confederate flag 'signifies the real American way of life as it was before James Meredith and Earl Warren, and as it can and will be again.'" He does not tell the reader that Barrett is not and never has been a member of the CofCC or that Barrett was not present at the only demonstration in support of the Confederate flag that the CofCC has helped organize in Mississippi...