[MUSIC] Welcome to The American South, its stories, its music and its art. I'm Bill Ferris. I teach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I grew up on a farm in Mississippi, not far from the Mississippi River. And my father, who was a farmer, taught me that you can always learn a lesson from the people you meet as you go through life. And that inspired me to listen to the stories of the people I met. And eventually to become a folklorist, and to teach about the stories of the South. And that's what this course will look at. How those stories have shaped southern music, southern literature, and southern people. As a child, I used to go to a little black church on the farm where I grew up. It was called Rose Hill Church. I loved the hymns, the spirituals, the sermons that I heard there. And we will revisit that church and meet some of the people who were my teachers growing up. I often tell my students an African proverb that says, when an old woman or man dies, a library burns to the ground. So, it's with a sense of urgency and very important focus that I, as a folklorist, tried to capture the stories of southerners. My grandfather grew up in the aftermath of the Civil War. He lived in a little log cabin, not far from my home on the farm. And he told me that as a child, he had been raised on cornbread and recollections. And I could identify with the stories that shaped both his life and my life. In this class, we're going to look at the American South. Geographically, we can think of the south as the upland south, the mountainous region in the Appalachian chain of mountains. And we can think of the lowland south, the rich agricultural land in the lowland areas in places like the Mississippi Delta. Where large numbers of slaves and later, of free black families, continue to live to this day. And it's out of those worlds that music like the Mississippi Delta Blues was created. And that the great literature of William Faulkner and Alice Walker was inspired. So we will look at these places. We will meet the people. And we will learn about how they understand the American South. We will see through their eyes. The American South, it's stories, it's music, and it's art.
