Podcast appearances and mentions of william ferris

Join host Austin Williams with guest's Chris Windle (Artistic Director of Williams Ferris Chorale) and composer Kile Smith as they break down Kile's newly commissioned work by the ensemble. Kile has a lot to say about the fugal nature of his work and how he approaches this older technique to a modern context. Kile worked with a unique text that heavily juxtaposes the topics of life and death. He explains in the interview how this was a large inspiration for the use of fugue. A large chunk of the program from this concert is also featured on this episode. Please enjoy what the William Ferris Chorale has to offer us and their dedication to new choral music.

As the William Ferris Chorale enters their 50th Anniversary season, they celebrate the idea of movement. Movement, as an idea, exists throughout music in a myriad of ways: momentum, tempo, change, renewal, phrasing. This season, the celebrated chorus will celebrate this idea of patterns, of detail, of movement – the vision of contemporary vocal music and living composers in Chicago for the last 50 years. Join Austin Williams and Chris Windle, Artistic and Music Director of the William Ferris Chorale, as they chat about the ensemble, the music they champion, and this strange intersection that seems to occur between early vocal music and modern, new vocal music.

This part of our talk we chatted about his winning his Grammy awards and Blues Markers and of course the Delta a little food and fun times. I hope you enjoy.

It's always been a pleasure to speak with Mr.Ferris.  His documentary work over decades  were noticed by the Grammys and he's encouraged me to keep on, and let people's voices be heard, as he has. I always feel honored and blessed  to speak with him and I hope you enjoy his story and our talk of the Blues.

12th studio album - StormwatchGet your Talk Tull To Me merch here!Talk Tull To Me Patreon & schedule.Talk Tull to Me is a proud part of the Feckless Momes Audio Network.Art credit: Burton SilvermanMusic credits: “Bourée” - Jethro Tull”Cup of Wonder” - Jethro Tull”Paparazzi” - Jethro Tull”A Single Man” - Jethro Tull”Sleeping with the Dogs” - Jethro Tull”Dogs in Midwinter” - Jethro Tull”Once in Royal David's City” - The Choir of Arundel Cathedral, William Ferris, Elizabeth Stratford”Flying Dutchman” - Jethro Tull”High Lonesome Sound” - Vince Gill”Man in the Mirror” - Michael Jackson

Period photographs of pivotal moments, first-person stories from history, and the trail of Black America's fight for freedom and equality present a vivid look at the movement that transformed America.Panelists:DEBORAH D. DOUGLAS is the Eugene S. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at DePauw University and a senior leader with The OpEd Project, leading thought leadership fellowships and programs that include the University of Texas at Austin, Yale University, Dartmouth College, Columbia University, Urgent Action Fund in South Africa and Kenya, and the McCormick Foundation-supported Youth Narrating Our World (YNOW). While teaching at her alma mater, Northwestern University's Medill School, she spearheaded a graduate investigative journalism capstone on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and taught best practices in Karachi, Pakistan. She is an award-winning journalist, including the 2019 Studs Terkel award, and founding managing editor of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Douglas is author of "Moon U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler's Guide to the People, Places, and Events That Made the Movement" (Moon Travel, 2021) and is among 90 contributors to "Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019," edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain (Random House/One World).A native of Holly Springs, Mississippi, Roy is the Executive Director and one of the founders of the Hill Country Project . He was active as a high school student in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, and then as a general organizer. Roy earned his Bachelor's degree in Sociology at Brandeis University in 1970. Continuing his education at Brandeis, he went on to earn a Masters and later a Doctorate in Political Science in 1978. He has also pursued additional studies at Jackson State, Duke, Carnegie-Mellon, Michigan and Harvard Universities.He has a wife, Rubye and one daughter, Aisha Isoke. William Ferris is the Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (1997-2001), Ferris has written or edited 16 books and created 15 documentary films. He co-edited with Charles Wilson the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His books include: Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues, The Storied South: Voices of Writers and Artists, and The South in Color: A Visual Journal. His most recent publication Voices of Mississippi received two Grammy Awards for Best Liner Notes and for Best Historical Album. Ferris curated "I Am a Man:" Civil Rights Photographs in the American South-1960-1970, which is on exhibit at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and is accompanied by his latest book "I Am a Man": Civil Rights Photographs in the American South-1960-1970.His honors include the Charles Frankel Prize in the Humanities, the American Library Association's Dartmouth Medal, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award, and the W.C. Handy Blues Award. In 1991, Rolling Stone magazine named him among the Top Ten Professors in the United States. He is a Fellow of the American Folklore Society. Ferris received the B. L. C. Wailes Award, given to a Mississippian who has achieved national recognition in the field of history by the Mississippi Historical Society. In 2017, Ferris received the Mississippi Governor's Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement.Moderator :Motivational speaker, historian, and women's activist, Pamela D.C. Junior is a native of Jackson, Mississippi and earned a B.S. in Education with a minor in Special Education from Jackson State University. Pamela is the newly appointed director of the Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson, Mississippi. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The ANA unites leading African American scholars of the early 20th century, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, William Ferris, Archibald Grimké, and Kelly Miller.

Tommy J. Curry is a Professor of Philosophy and holds the Personal Chair of Africana Philosophy and Black Male Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests are 19th century ethnology, Critical Race Theory & Black Male Studies. He is the author of The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press 2017), which won the 2018 American Book Award, and Another white Man’s Burden: Josiah Royce’s Quest for a Philosophy of Racial Empire (SUNY Press 2018), which recently won the Josiah Royce Prize for American Idealist Thought. He has also re-published the forgotten philosophical works of William Ferris as The Philosophical Treatise of William H. Ferris: Selected Readings from The African Abroad or, His Evolution in Western Civilization (Rowman & Littlefield 2016). In 2019 he became the editor of the first book series dedicated to the study of Black males entitled Black Male Studies: A Series Exploring the Paradoxes of Racially Subjugated Males on Temple University Press. Dr. Curry’s research has been recognized by Diverse as placing him among the Top 15 Emerging Scholars in the United States in 2018, and his public intellectual work earned him the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy’s Alain Locke Award in 2017. He is the past president of Philosophy Born of Struggle, one of the oldest Black philosophy organizations in the United States. This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Curry's talk - 'Must there be an Empirical Basis for the Theorization of Racialized Subjects in Race-Gender Theory?' - at the Aristotelian Society on 19 October 2020. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

We talk to William Ferris - Folklorist, Author and Grammy Award Winner. Bill takes us back to his early childhood years growing up in Vicksburg, Mississippi and how he began his career documenting a lifetime of musicians and charismatic characters in America's southern states during the 1960s and 1970s. It's a fascinating journey which sees Bill sharing the events in others lives whilst creating his own unique story.

Brutality and inhumanity were central to the Southern state prison farms, in their theory and their practice, and of them all, the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Farm was the most brutal and inhuman. Both John A. and Alan Lomax made repeated visits to Parchman, recording — under the eye of the disinterested white captains, sergeants, and warden, and the guns of the "trusty" prisoner-guards — a body of American song unmatched in its depth, dignity, and power. 

Folklorist and prison documentarian Bruce Jackson once said that the group work songs sung by the black inmates of the Southern penitentiary farms were means of "making it in Hell." Alan Lomax, writing in 1947, said that: "In the pen itself, we saw that the songs, quite literally kept the men alive and normal.... These songs, coming out of the filthy darkness of the pen, touched with exquisite musicality, are a testimony to the love of truth and beauty which is a universal human trait." In this episode, spurred by the ongoing horrors being reported in the Mississippi Department of Corrections in general and at Parchman in particular, we listen back over the four decades of recordings made by the four white folklorists (the Lomaxes, Herbert Halpert, and William Ferris) who took the trouble to visit the place and document the singing of its prisoners: work songs for clearing ground, felling trees, picking cotton, or breaking rocks, as well as solo field hollers, spirituals, and blues.No one can mourn the passing of this song tradition and the system of black disenfranchisement and white supremacy that made it necessary to its singers. But, despite the 1971 class-auction lawsuit that forced federal reorganization of Parchman due to its epidemic use of "cruel and unusual punishment," it's only differently awful in 2020. In his harrowing "Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice," Michael Oshinsky provides a 1975 quote from a convict named Horace Carter, who’d been at Parchman for fifty years. What was missing in the “new” Parchman, Mr. Carter said, was “the feeling that work counted for something… awful bad as it was in most camps, that kept us tired and kept us together and made me feel better. I’m not looking to go backwards. I know the troubles at old Parchman better than any man alive. I’m 73 years old. But I look around today and see a place that makes me sad.”  

This episode was completed before the announcement that William Barr's Justice Department will open a civil rights investigation into conditions at Parchman. It's hard to imagine an administration with less sympathy for incarcerated people of color, but who knows, maybe, at last, Parchman Farm will be shuttered for good. 

“These songs are a vivid reminder of a system of social control and forced labor that has endured in the South for centuries, and I do not believe that the pattern of Southern life can be fundamentally reshaped until what lies behind these roaring, ironic choruses is understood.” —Alan Lomax, 1958For streaming audio of all of Alan Lomax's 1947, 1948, and 1959 Parchman Farm recordings, visit research.culturalequity.org.



PLAYLIST:[Bed music:] Unidentified ensemble, including Lonnie Robertson, guitar, and possibly "Black Eagle," cornet. Camp 1, April 1936. *Frank Devine and unidentified man: In the Bye and Bye. Unidentified camp, August 1933. *Bowlegs (real name unknown): Drink My Morning Tea. Camp 12, August 1933. *Unidentified men: He Never Said A Mumblin' Word. Unidentified camp, August 1933. *M.B. Barnes, Louella Dade, Passion Buckner, Alberta Turner, Bertha Riley, Lily Mallard, Christine Shannon, and Josephine Douglas: Oh Freedom. Women's camp, April 1936.*Big Charlie Butler: Diamond Joe. Unidentified camp, March 1937. [Bed music:] John Dudley: Cool Drink of Water Blues. Dairy camp, October 1959. 

*Mattie May Thomas: Workhouse Blues. Women's camp, May 1939.*"22" (Benny Will Richardson) and group: It Makes A Long Time Man Feel Bad. Camp B, November or December 1947.

*Ervin Webb and group: I'm Goin' Home. Dairy camp, October 1959. *Johnny Lee Moore, Henry Mason, Ed Lewis and James Carter: Tom Devil. Camp B, October 1959.[Bed music:] James Carter and group: Poor Lazarus. Camp B, October 1959. *Unidentified prisoners: Water Boy Drowned In the Mobile Bay. Unidentified camp, August 1968. *Heuston Earms: Ain't Been Able to Get Home No More / interview. Camp B, October 1959.

Brutality and inhumanity were central to the Southern state prison farms, in their theory and their practice, and of them all, the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Farm was the most brutal and inhuman. Both John A. and Alan Lomax made repeated visits to Parchman, recording — under the eye of the disinterested white captains, sergeants, and warden, and the guns of the "trusty" prisoner-guards — a body of American song unmatched in its depth, dignity, and power. Folklorist and prison documentarian Bruce Jackson once said that the group work songs sung by the black inmates of the Southern penitentiary farms were means of "making it in Hell." Alan Lomax, writing in 1947, said that: "In the pen itself, we saw that the songs, quite literally kept the men alive and normal.... These songs, coming out of the filthy darkness of the pen, touched with exquisite musicality, are a testimony to the love of truth and beauty which is a universal human trait." In this episode, spurred by the ongoing horrors being reported in the Mississippi Department of Corrections in general and at Parchman in particular, we listen back over the four decades of recordings made by the four white folklorists (the Lomaxes, Herbert Halpert, and William Ferris) who took the trouble to visit the place and document the singing of its prisoners: work songs for clearing ground, felling trees, picking cotton, or breaking rocks, as well as solo field hollers, spirituals, and blues.No one can mourn the passing of this song tradition and the system of black disenfranchisement and white supremacy that made it necessary to its singers. But, despite the 1971 class-auction lawsuit that forced federal reorganization of Parchman due to its epidemic use of "cruel and unusual punishment," it's only differently awful in 2020. In his harrowing "Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice," Michael Oshinsky provides a 1975 quote from a convict named Horace Carter, who'd been at Parchman for fifty years. What was missing in the “new” Parchman, Mr. Carter said, was “the feeling that work counted for something… awful bad as it was in most camps, that kept us tired and kept us together and made me feel better. I'm not looking to go backwards. I know the troubles at old Parchman better than any man alive. I'm 73 years old. But I look around today and see a place that makes me sad.” This episode was completed before the announcement that William Barr's Justice Department will open a civil rights investigation into conditions at Parchman. It's hard to imagine an administration with less sympathy for incarcerated people of color, but who knows, maybe, at last, Parchman Farm will be shuttered for good. “These songs are a vivid reminder of a system of social control and forced labor that has endured in the South for centuries, and I do not believe that the pattern of Southern life can be fundamentally reshaped until what lies behind these roaring, ironic choruses is understood.” —Alan Lomax, 1958For streaming audio of all of Alan Lomax's 1947, 1948, and 1959 Parchman Farm recordings, visit archive.culturalequity.org.PLAYLIST:[Bed music:] Unidentified ensemble, including Lonnie Robertson, guitar, and possibly "Black Eagle," cornet. Camp 1, April 1936. *Frank Devine and unidentified man: In the Bye and Bye. Unidentified camp, August 1933. *Bowlegs (real name unknown): Drink My Morning Tea. Camp 12, August 1933. *Unidentified men: He Never Said A Mumblin' Word. Unidentified camp, August 1933. *M.B. Barnes, Louella Dade, Passion Buckner, Alberta Turner, Bertha Riley, Lily Mallard, Christine Shannon, and Josephine Douglas: Oh Freedom. Women's camp, April 1936.*Big Charlie Butler: Diamond Joe. Unidentified camp, March 1937.[Bed music:] John Dudley: Cool Drink of Water Blues. Dairy camp, October 1959. *Mattie May Thomas: Workhouse Blues. Women's camp, May 1939.*"22" (Benny Will Richardson) and group: It Makes A Long Time Man Feel Bad. Camp B, November or December 1947. *Ervin Webb and group: I'm Goin' Home. Dairy camp, October 1959. *Johnny Lee Moore, Henry Mason, Ed Lewis and James Carter: Tom Devil. Camp B, October 1959.[Bed music:] James Carter and group: Poor Lazarus. Camp B, October 1959. *Unidentified prisoners: Water Boy Drowned In the Mobile Bay. Unidentified camp, August 1968. *Heuston Earms: Ain't Been Able to Get Home No More / interview. Camp B, October 1959.

Preeminent Southern folklorist Bill Ferris has spent the last 40 years documenting the South in print, photography and film. His book, The Storied South, is a collection of interviews with some of the South's (and country's) most iconic writers and artists, including Alice Walker, Alex Haley, Robert Penn Warren and Eudora Welty. We discuss the book, the importance of story and how Bill defines the South. Featuring the song "Remember You Used to Love Me" by War Jacket. Originally aired September 10, 2013.

Eudora Welty was one of the South’s most beloved writers, and her fiction is still a study in detail and dialogue and wit. Her settings were often Southern, but her themes were universal. Eudora won multiple awards in her lifetime, including a Pulitzer in 1973 for her novel The Optimist’s Daughter. She passed away in 2001.The audio you hear of Eudora in this episode is part of folklorist Bill Ferris' book The Storied South, which is a collection of interviews with iconic writers, musicians, historians, photographers and artists. I first featured Bill in Episode 10, and we talked extensively about his 40-year career and how the South has perfected the art of storytelling. In this episode, Bill returns to tell us about his close friendship with the famous Southern writer. Originally aired January 16, 2014.

ESPECIAL JAMES SON THOMAS El blues es una verdadera expresión de arte popular, pero en el caso de James “Son” Thomas, sólo era una forma de expresar su genio creativo, lo que le ayudó a obtener reconocimiento. Los blues estuvieron siempre presentes en su vida, pero no fue hasta su "descubrimiento" a mediados de la década de 1960 por William Ferris, cuando se convertiría en algo tan rentable como para olvidares de otros curros. Gracias a un libro y a una película la vida y obra de Thomas comenzaron a ganar la atención de todo le mundo, algo que también lo llevó a Europa e incluso a tener un encuentro con un presidente.

ESPECIAL JAMES SON THOMAS El blues es una verdadera expresión de arte popular, pero en el caso de James “Son” Thomas, sólo era una forma de expresar su genio creativo, lo que le ayudó a obtener reconocimiento. Los blues estuvieron siempre presentes en su vida, pero no fue hasta su "descubrimiento" a mediados de la década de 1960 por William Ferris, cuando se convertiría en algo tan rentable como para olvidares de otros curros. Gracias a un libro y a una película la vida y obra de Thomas comenzaron a ganar la atención de todo le mundo, algo que también lo llevó a Europa e incluso a tener un encuentro con un presidente.

Mark Katz (Institute Director, Professor of Music) interviews Professor Emeritus William Ferris on his Grammy Award-winning boxed set "Voices of Mississippi" (Dust to Digital). You can buy the boxed set or the vinyl version through https://www.dust-digital.com/ferris/ Music credits include in order of appearance: “My Mother's on that Train” by Mary Alice and Alan McGowan “I've Been Born Again” by The Southland Hummingbirds “Cairo” by James Son Ford Thomas “He's My Rock, My Sword, and Shield” by Fannie Bell & Family “Eyesight to the Blind” performed by Sam Myers “Nothing” by Wash Heron & Big Jack Johnson Follow IAH on Twitter: https://twitter.com/iah_unc Follow Dust to Digital on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dusttodigital Follow Philip: https://twitter.com/pchollingsworth

Larry Morrisey talks with folklorist and 2017 Governor’s Arts Award recipient William Ferris about the Grammy nomination for his latest project, a box set of his recordings and films. They also talk about how he got started documenting local folk culture while growing up on a farm in Warren County. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Folklorist and Professor Bill Ferris, a Grammy nominee this year for his "Voices of Mississippi" 3 CD Box set, has committed his life to documenting and expanding the study of the American South. His recordings, photos and films of preachers, quilt makers, blues musicians and more are now online as part of the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina. Bill Ferris grew up on a farm in Warren County, Mississippi along the Black River. His family, the only white family on the farm, worked side by side with the African Americans in the fields. When he was five, a woman named Mary Gordon would take him every first Sunday to Rose Hill Church, the small African American church on the farm. When Bill was a teenager he got a reel-to-reel tape recorder and started recording the hymns and services. “ I realized that the beautiful hymns were sung from memory—there were no hymnals in the church—and that when those families were no longer there, the hymns would simply disappear.” These recordings led Bill to a lifetime of documenting the world around him—preachers, workers, storytellers, men in prison, quilt makers, the blues musicians living near his home (including the soon-to-be well known Mississippi Fred McDowell). Bill became a prolific author, folklorist, filmmaker, professor, and served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a professor of history at UNC–Chapel Hill and an adjunct professor in the Curriculum in Folklore. He served as the founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, where he was a faculty member for 18 years. He is associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South. Bill’s has written and edited 10 books and created 15 documentary films, most dealing with African-American music and other folklore representing the Mississippi Delta. His thousands of photographs, films, audio interviews, and recordings of musicians are now online in the William R. Ferris Collection, part of the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina. This story was produced by Barrett Golding with The Kitchen Sisters for The Keepers series.

For Thanksgiving, this week’s show features works praising God by Chicago composers Leo Sowerby and William Ferris.

This week's program features music by Chicago composer William Ferris (1937–2000) and performances by the ensemble that bears his name, the William Ferris Chorale.

For the week of Earth Day, we present music about our planet, its challenges, and some of its greatest features.

On our show for the week of Thanksgiving, we present works praising God by Chicago composers Leo Sowerby and William Ferris. November 27 Thanksgiving LEO SOWERBY (1895-1968) The Canticle of the Sun (32:18) O most high... Praised be my Lord God with all his creatures... Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon... Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind... Praised be my Lord for our sister water... Praised be my Lord for our brother fire... Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth... Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one another... Praised be my Lord for our sister the death of the body... Blessed are they... Praise ye the Lord... From The Pulitzer Project Cedille Records CDR 90000 125 (Tracks 11–21) Grant Park Orchestra Grant Park Chorus Carlos Kalmar, conductor Christopher Bell, chorus director WILLIAM FERRIS (1942-2000) Gloria (18:57) From Corridors of Light: Music of William Ferris Cedille Records CDR 7005 (Track 1) Patricia Spencer, soprano Kathleen Meredith, alto John Vorrasi, tenor Philip Skeris, bass William Ferris Chorale Composer Festival Orchestra William Ferris, conductor

CLEARSTORY SHOW 09-03-10 (CLICK THE LINK ABOVE TO LISTEN TO SHOW AT YOUR LEISURE) FRIDAY MORNINGS AT 9:00AM These voices express the blues in a deep and truthful way. They touched my heart.”—B. B. King This week we feature Give My Poor Heart Ease, Voices of the Mississippi Blues. A little visit from William Ferris […]