When: 
Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Where: 
Landis Cinema, Buck Hall
Presenter: 
Alison Saar
Price: 
Free

Join artist Alison Saar as she share blues, jazz, and gospel music from the 1920s along with archival photographs, maps, and historic documents that were sources of inspiration for her exhibition Breach, at the Grossman Gallery. 


The 1927 Flood was a landmark moment in American music history. Delta blues musicians responded to the flood and its aftermath with at least 25 to 30 songs, and there were probably an equivalent number of gospel songs. Musicians joined the Northern Migration bringing the blues to Kansas City, Chicago and beyond and the resulting collision of Southern blues with the first electric guitars, which would eventually lead to rock 'n' roll.

 Blues musicians responded with at least two dozen songs, including Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues” (1927), Charley Patton‘s “High Water Everywhere, Part 1” (1929), Lonnie Johnson’s “Broken Levee Blues” and 1929’s “When the Levee Breaks,” by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy—A song also covered by Led Zeppelin in 1971 and Dylan. Other songs were written about the conditions in relief camps and the relationship with such groups such as the Red Cross.

Breach weaves narratives relating to the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927. Described as the worst recorded river disaster in the U.S., this catastrophe had a profound impact on African Americans living in the Mississippi Delta and brought long-term social, cultural, federal policy, and political changes to the country.

 

Sponsored by: 
Lafayette Art Galleries and Department of Art