In June, 1994, Elder Roma Wilson was named to receive a National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts. An African American Harmonica player from Blue Springs, Mississippi, Wilson was one of eleven folk masters in traditional artforms to receive the award.
"We honor these extraordinary Americans for their lifetime work," said Arts Endowment Chairman Jane Alexander. "They are artists of traditions pure in form and rich in spirit, the wellspring of our diverse American Culture."
As is often the case with music passed on through aural tradition, an artist's creations may become more famous than the artist himself. This is certainly the case with harmonica player, singer, and composer Elder Roma Wilson, whose music is known to millions of Americans, while he remained in obscurity until being "rediscovered" in the 1980's by his former partner in song, Reverend Leon Pinson.
Roma Wilson was born in 1910 and hails originally from Tupelo, Mississippi. Folklorist Worth Long recounts Wilson's early musical life: "Elder Roma Wilson learned to play the harmonica as a boy with old, worn-out harps discarded by his older brothers. He learned to choke' these harps in order to get traditional sounds out of them. He was taught by both traditional secular and scared harp masters and became known throughout the state for his version of the song 'This Train.'" A young minister as well as accomplished harpist, Wilson subsequently teamed up with the young, blind, guitar-playing Reverend Pinson to travel around Mississippi and Arkansas, preaching the gospel on the "brush arbor" circuit and playing the religion-inspired music for which they both became known as masters.
In the 1940's, he parted ways with Pinson and moved to Detroit to raise his family, making his living as a street musician on Hastings Street. It was here that Joe Von Battle, owner of Joe's Record Shop covertly recorded Wilson's astonishing harp-blowing and subsequently released a 78 rpm recording of "Lily of the Valley" and "Better Get Ready," on the Gotham label. These recordings became legendary, and when they were re-released in 1983 by St. George Records, the liner notes stated: "Concerning Elder R. Wilson, nothing of a background nature is available for study. Robert [Richard] remembered recording with a preacher, but sadly nothing else....Hopefully more information will surface on this charismatic preacher who blew harp and quite possibly had the help of ascending masters, as blues legends claim that one sold one's soul to the devil to play that well." Elder Wilson replies: "That ain't true. I'm alive and well in Mississippi and still don't play no blues." Elder Wilson also taught his sons to play the harp, and in another 1940's recording at Joe's Record Shop, he and his three sons made what is now considered to be an important historic 78 rpm release of what Mike Seeger has called "the single most important selection by multi-harp players in existence."
Elder Wilson and Reverend Pinson were reunited when Wilson returned to Red Hill, Mississippi, in the 1980's. They have since performed at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Chicago Blues Festival, the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, the National Black Arts Festival, and other major events. In 1991, the Southern Arts Federation took them to venues throughout the South as part of the "Deep South Musical Roots" tour. Elder Wilson's performances today, usually coupled with his long-time partner Pinson, move audiences as much as they ever did, as described by David Whiteis of the Chicago Sun-Times: "Wilson, who alternates his harp blowing with the 'brush arbor' preaching in the traditional southern rural style, provides eloquent accompaniment and a gentle impetus for Pinson's fretwork. Together they provide a rare testimony to the power of music as a vehicle of faith."
The Alabama Center for Traditional Culture will hold "In the Spirit" May 13 - 14, 1995, at the Gadsden Ampitheatre. The ACTC received a 1995 Cultural Olympiad Regional Designation Award in the Arts from the A.C.O.G. for this exploration of Alabama's rich variety of sacred music. The projects two-day performance celebration will include gospel, Sacred Harp, hymns, bluegrass gospel, Christian Harmony, gospel quartet, and Covenanter psalm singing. A Book of essays and a CD recording will be available May 1st.
For more information call The Alabama Center for Traditional Culture, (334) 242-3601.
The American Folklore Society will hold its annual meeting at the Lafayette Hilton in Lafayette, Louisiana October 12-15 1995. The special theme for the 1995 Convention is "The Creolization of Culture." The AFS February newsletter quotes the late Cajun musician and National Heritage Fellow Dewey Balfa on the concept of creolization: "I'm interested in preserving the life of the culture and not freeze-drying it for others to visit [and study] conveniently."
For more information about the conference contact Lucille Dinon Horn, AFS 1995 Annual Meeting, 4350 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 640, Arlington, VA 22203.
The Mississippi Arts Commission and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture have received a grant from the Folk Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts to document the traditions of African American shape note singers in Mississippi. With this support, Project Researcher Chiquita Willis is continuing her thorough documentation of this important tradition.
For more information on the project, contact Chiquita Willis, African American Studies, University of Mississippi, 38677.
In 1995, Living Blues celebrates its 25th anniversary as America's most respected blues magazine. Since its founding in 1970, Living Blues has grown as the popularity of the music has grown. Along the way, the magazine has staked its reputation on lively, uncompromising, and in-depth coverage on the blues scene.
The March/April 1995 issue of Living Blues commemorates the 25th anniversary by looking forward rather than backward. The focus of this special 192-page issue is on the "next generation" of blues, with profiles of many of today's up-and-coming artists.
For more information on this issue or Living Blues in general, contact Jennifer Langston, Publications, Hill Hall 301, University of Mississippi, 38677.
East Central Community College will dedicate its new fine arts center May 6, 1995, in honor of Ovid Vickers, president of the Mississippi Folklore Society. Vickers is retiring after 40 years of teaching on the ECCC campus where he has been an influential teacher of English, Speech, and Drama. Writing in the Clarion-Ledger, Danny McKenzie commented on Vickers and the Center: "If ever there was a more appropriate honor than East Central Community College naming its fine art center for Ovid Vickers, it doesn't come to mind."
George Worley Boswell, former professor of English at the University of Mississippi and a respected folklorist, died March 22, 1995 at his residence in Tupelo. Though Boswell had recently moved to Tupelo from Nashville, Tennessee, he was a long-time resident of Oxford and Professor Emeritus at the University of Mississippi. Educated at David Lipscomb University, Vanderbilt, and George Peabody College for Teachers, Boswell was a past president of the Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi Folklore Societies. He was a counselor and regent of the American Folklore Society, a member of the Modern Language Association and founded Kappa Delta Pi Honorary Society at Austin Peay. He also founded the Oxford Madrigal Society.
Charles K. Wolfe, folklorist and music historian, has recently completed editing Folksongs From Middle Tennessee: The George Boswell Collection which will be published by the University of Tennessee Press. Included is this volume are folksongs Boswell collected in Tennessee during 1948-1958. "As far as I'm concerned," asserts Charles Wolfe, "Boswell is the most important collector of folklore and folksong in Tennessee, especially in middle Tennessee. Long before other folklorists acknowledged the potential of collecting in urban areas and from professionals, Boswell was collecting in Nashville from doctors at Vanderbilt. He collected songs from the Tennessee River to the Cumberland Plateau. And he was the only folkorist to go out and collect from Uncle Dave Macon. He did very important work."
In 1987 William S. Hays, then Secretary-Treasurer of the Folklore Society, established the George W. Boswell Scholarship Fund. Any donations to the fund in memory of George Boswell should be sent in care of Tom Rankin at the University of Mississippi.