NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The rescue of the work of three Fisk University scholars who researched the lives and music of people in the Mississippi Delta in the 1940s will be celebrated with a reception, panel discussion and musical performance at Fisk.
Lost Delta Found: Rediscovering the Fisk University-Library of Congress Coahoma County Study, 1941-1942 was published this year by Vanderbilt University Press. The book, edited by Robert Gordon and Bruce Nemerov, brings to light the work of musicologist John Work, sociologist Lewis Jones and graduate student Samuel Adams – all of Fisk.
The Lost Delta Found celebration, which is free and open to the public, is at 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3, in The Appleton Room of Jubilee Hall at Fisk. The Fisk Jubilee Singers, directed by Paul Kwami, will perform.
The panel discussion will be moderated by Bill Ivey, director of Vanderbilt’s Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, and feature Gordon, Nemerov, John Work IV and Frederick Work. The latter two are John W. Work’s sons.
Work, Jones and Adams accompanied famed musicologist John Lomax on research trips in 1941 and 1942. Lomax condensed the two trips to one in his book Land Where the Blues Began after plans for a joint publication between Fisk and the Library of Congress fell through.
The work of Work, Jones and Adams was rediscovered in a mislabeled box in a Nashville storage facility by Gordon while he was researching a biography of Muddy Waters.
“What I would like to see come from this book is John Work and his peers rightly given their place in history, the affirmation that history as we know it is not always accurate, and a fresh questioning of everything we know,” Gordon said.
Lost Delta Found: Rediscovering the Fisk University-Library of Congress Coahoma County Study, 1941-1942 will be available for purchase at the event.
Media contacts: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
Jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu
Ken West, (615) 329-8767
kwest@fisk.edu
Sue Havlish, (615) 343-2446
Sue.havlish@vanderbilt.edu