Music and Food: Exploring Interdependent Cultural Expressions

2009 Delta Divertissement October 29–30, 2009 (Sold Out)
2009 Southern Foodways Symposium October 30–November 1, 2009 (Tickets Still Available)

For more information and registration, click here. (http://www.southernfoodways.com/events/symposium/index.html)

 
The twelfth Southern Foodways Symposium will be held October 30—November 1, 2009, in and around the town of Oxford and on the campus of the University of Mississippi. The Delta Divertissement, now in its seventh year, will take place October 29—30 in nearby Greenwood and Indianola. Both events will explore music and food as intertwined evocations of Southern peoples and places.

 
Over the course of four days of lectures and performances, as well as breakfasts, dinners, and suppers, we will unlock the key to what Memphis Minnie really meant when she sang, “I’m selling my pork chops/But I’m giving my gravy away.”

 
New Orleans will get its due, by way of red beans and rice and jazz. So will Texas blues. And Tennessee country. And hip hop from the ATL.

 
We’ll stage a ballet and a goat roast. We’ll feed on deep-fried catish and slow-simmered greens. We’ll take you down to the crossroads where food and music meet, and we’ll sketch the ways in which these cultural expressions are complementary.

 
These events are programmed to provide opportunities for academics, writers, cooks, and intellectually curious eaters to come to a better understanding of Southern culture and Southern cookery. Lectures, staged on the University of Mississippi campus, as well as in Oxford, at the Lyric Theatre and the Powerhouse, will be amplified by informal lunches and dinners, served in and around the town.