MUSIC
She’s Got the Rhythm (and the Blues)
CLARKSDALE, MISSISSIPPI
In her song “She Shimmy,” when Libby Rae Watson, a blues singer and guitarist from Pascagoula, belts out, “Hill Country spirits, all in this hall, clock strikes midnight, we’ll be having us a ball,” she pays homage to the musicians who blazed a path for her. Names like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf have long been a part of the Mississippi blues collective memory, and now, thanks to music lovers in Clarksdale, the women of blues are getting their due, too. “There’s a special energy in this hub for the blues, community, and revitalization in downtown Clarksdale,” says Colleen Buyers, who with her organization Shared Experiences launched the Women in Blues Festival (May 19–20), now in its second year. Watson will open this year’s festival, followed by performances by Edna Nicole Luckett and LaLa Craig. “I was so happy that we blues artists finally have a space just for women,” Watson says. “In my fifty years of performing, I have never seen an event like this.”
TRADITIONS
Alabama
COMMON THREADS
Cross, catch, or slip, every stitch tells a story. Natalie Chanin, founder of the sustainable design company Alabama Chanin, created the nonprofit Project Threadways to uncover, preserve, and share them—both stitches and stories. “Textiles are so intertwined with many areas of the South, from the cotton fields to the sock and T-shirt mills now gone,” Chanin says. “Our textile stories—rich, complicated, sometimes brutal, sometimes beautiful—are disappearing, too.” Project Threadways’ 2023 Symposium (April 20–22), in Chanin’s home base of Florence, aims to keep those stories humming,
