The Berklee Mississippi Exchange Band headed to the Delta Blues Museum’s outdoor stage, ready for their first set of the day. It would be during the Juke Joint Festival debut by a Berklee group when the summer scholarship winner would be revealed. Both contenders, with family members and close friends were stage side, waiting, smiling [...]
Tag Archives: Mississippi Delta
The snare drum rolls in Clarksdale for the summer scholarship applicants
I can’t imagine what the two young women have been thinking since their scholarship auditions at the Delta Blues Museum on Thursday. Jacquline Gooch and Paula Thompson, students from the Delta Blues Museum’s Arts & Education Program, were both outstanding. Gooch, 19, accompanied herself on a guitar with a sliver of worn wood below the sound hole that [...]
A musical and educational exchange grows in Mississippi
Year three. The principal mission of the trip to the most Southern place on earth remains the same: finding two young musicians qualified for the Five-Week Summer Performance Program and awarding them full scholarships. What is new, is that now I have company down here. No longer is it just I, Allen Bush/Berklee PR guy/deep [...]
Delta Blues scholarship recipient is serious about Berklee
Fried steak and pork shops. Field peas. Barbecue chicken tenders. Lima beans. Turnip greens. Baked beans with hamburger and barbecue sauce. Corn bread. Sweet tea and peach cobbler. Filling-up on the Ranchero’s lunch buffet on Rt. 161 at the edge of town, I’m now ready to commune with Clarksdale, Mississippi. This is the day when one teen from the [...]
Searching hallowed turf in Mississippi for summer scholarship recipients
I’m Allen Bush, director of Berklee’s public information office, and, at the moment, bridge-builder to Mississippi. I’m here in the Deep South this weekend to find teen musicians or singers and award them scholarships to Berklee’s five-week summer performance program. My partners will be the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, and the Robert Johnson Blues [...]