Future Projects
 

Blues harmonica player, R. L. House. Photo by Worth Long.

What Is the Pine Hills Culture Program?

The Pine Hills Culture Program, formed in 1996, is part of the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. Its purpose is to document, preserve, and present traditions and folk culture of the U.S. South's pine hills (or piney woods) region; to build and maintain a network of academics, public programmers, lay scholars, community leaders, and folk artists; and to serve as a regional archive, a place for exhibits, and an information clearinghouse. An important part of its mission is helping communities to identify their own traditions and integrate folklife into local projects, museums, schools, festivals, and other public presentations. 

The program is headed by a public sector folklorist, Dr. Carolyn Ware. Our main office is in the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage on the USM campus, but we also lease offices, including programming and exhibit space, at the Walthall Center in Hattiesburg's downtown historic district. 

The Pine Hills Culture Program is funded by the university and through grants from state and national agencies. Major funders include the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Community Folklife Program, and the Mississippi Arts Commission, all of which have provided multi-year grant support. We also have received generous project support from the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and USM's Crosby Lecture Fund.
 
 

Community Scholars Folklife Field School

The Pine Hills Culture Program got off to a strong start with its first initiative, the Piney Woods Community Scholars Project, in 1996. This project was designed to identify and document tradition bearers and folk artists in Mississippi's pine hills (or piney woods) region and present this research to the public. We did this by offering ethnographic training to community members, who then conducted discovery-level fieldwork in their own communities. Many planned to apply this training to their work in community museums, classrooms, or libraries. 

Twenty-two community scholars from throughout the pine hills region were selected to attend the field school, which met in Hattiesburg over three weekends in June and July of 1996. They were introduced to definitions of folklore and folklife, an overview of piney woods history and culture, and the basic techniques of oral history and folklife fieldwork. The scholars then developed fieldwork projects in their own communities, interviewing and photographing tradition bearers and community historians. Five graduate students in anthropology and history also attended the field school and developed fieldwork projects; in many cases, they teamed up with community scholars with common research interests. 

By September of 1996, community scholars and graduate students had documented more than fifty individuals in twenty-one of the region's counties. Traditions documented include fiddling styles, gardening, logging, Fifth Sunday gospel singing and dinner on the ground, traditional crafts, foodways, folk medicine, architecture, storytelling, and community histories. Photographs and taped interviews from project fieldwork formed the beginning of the Pine Hills Culture Program's archives. You'll find a list of these interviews on this web site under Pine Hills Culture Program Interview Index.

Judges in chicken pie contest, Washington Parish Fair. 
Photo by Aimee Schmidt.

A Taste of Pine Hills Traditions: Exhibit and Programming

From field school documentation, we developed a traveling exhibit called A Taste of Pine Hills Traditions, which visited nine sitesCprimarily public librariesCin south Mississippi during 1997. In conjunction with the exhibit, we produced a series of folk arts programs for the general public and schoolchildren. More information on this exhibit, including text and a sample photograph, is available under the heading A Taste of Pine Hills Traditions. 
 
 

The Piney Woods Opry in Mississippi: A Live Radio Show

We invited the founders of Abita Springs, Louisiana's Piney Woods Opry (copyrighted name), a monthly live radio show featuring early country music, to work with us to create a one-time Mississippi version of the show. The Piney Woods Opry in Mississippi took place on November 8, 1997 in Hattiesburg's Walthall Center auditorium, coinciding with the Walthall installation of A Taste of Pine Hills Traditions. The show featured a wide range of traditional musicians from south Mississippi: Roots Gospel Voices of Mississippi, early country music singer Rick McWilliams (a great-nephew of the late Jimmie Rodgers), bluegrass fiddler Jack Youngblood, banjo master Larry Wallace, and old-time fiddler George Cecil McLeod. 

The show was a great success, drawing a capacity crowd of more than 220 people to the auditorium. It was taped live and later broadcast on WUSM-FM and on PRM's Grassroots show. 

Musicians and audience members alike were so enthusiastic that we are now working on creating a regular, semi-annual live radio show of piney woods music. We recently received a Mississippi Arts Commission grant in support of two shows scheduled for the fall of 1999 and spring of 2000. Tentatively titled Roots Reunion, the live show will be based in Hattiesburg and will feature a variety of regional music styles such as blues, gospel, bluegrass, old-time music, and early country music.

"The Piney Woods Opry in Mississippi."

Piney Woods special issue of Mississippi Folklife

The final step of the community scholars project was to put together a publication on Piney Woods folklife. We teamed up with the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi to create a special Piney Woods issue of Mississippi Folklife in 1998. The 96-page issue includes articles on the region's history, ox team driving, sawmill traditions, folk gardening, music, folk medicine, catfish farming, and vernacular architecture. A section called "Piney Woods People" provides short profiles of some of the people and traditions documented. The publication was distributed to regular subscribers and to public schools and libraries in south Mississippi. Copies are available through the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage and through the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. 

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Piney Woods Regional Folklife Survey

Since 1998, we have been working on a two-year, multistate project called the Piney Woods Regional Folklife Survey. This collaborative project brings together four folk arts organizations from three states--Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana--to collaborate on documenting and presenting Piney Woods culture across state boundaries. We are working with the Mississippi Arts Commission, Louisiana's Division of the Arts, the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture to build upon existing documentation in these states and provide a more comprehensive view of Piney Woods folklife. The survey project takes a broad, regional approach that is particularly appropriate to the documentation of a culture that itself transcends state boundaries. It is also intended to develop a model for interstate cooperation and networking in documenting and presenting regional folk arts. 

The project began in February of 1998 with a project planning meeting of folklorists, folk artists, educators, and other community members from the three states. Experienced fieldworkers were contracted for a total of 150 days of field research in Louisiana's Florida Parishes, south Mississippi, and Alabama. Most fieldworkers were employed in other positions and so could only undertake relatively short projects, from three to twenty-five days of work. Fieldwork began a little more than a year ago and is scheduled to be completed by the end of August of 1999. 

So far, more than a hundred individuals and events have been documented. Topics include regional music traditions (blues, gospel, bluegrass, and old-time fiddling), foodways, hunting, dairy farming, the timber industry, fa sol la (shape note) singing, family reunions, and crafts such as quilting, woodworking, and saddle making. Because we planned to create a exhibit focusing on community celebrations from the field research, fieldworkers also documented a number of fairs, festivals, and other events--football games, chicken pie contests, and fire station jam sessions. Another priority was to discover more about the region's lesser-known ethnic and religious groups. Fieldworkers interviewed members of Alabama's Mowa Band of Choctaw and the Poarch Creek; Creoles in Lacombe and Ponchatoula, Louisiana; and members of Louisiana's Hungarian American community, for example. A list of interviews completed as of July 1, 1999 can be found under Pine Hills Culture Program Interview Index. 
 
 

Piney Woods Celebrations Exhibit

Piney Woods Celebrations is a traveling exhibit based on Piney Woods Regional Folklife Survey interviews and photographs. Photographs and text depict a few of the many kinds of events that bring people and communities together in the region: holidays such as Juneteenth and the Fourth of July, gospel sings, powwows, rodeos, family reunions, high school football games, and hunting clubs, for example. 

The exhibit was designed by award-winning designer Cavett Taff and built by Exhibits, Etc.. Forty-four color and black-and-white photographs, a map of the region, and seven text panels are printed on doublesided formica panels, which are framed in pine to form a free standing exhibit. Panels are anchored by a small church pew and barbecue pit, and CD player in the barbecue pit plays music and oral history excerpts. 

Piney Woods Celebrations opened at the 1999 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (April 23 through May 2.) Next it visited the Mississippi Heritage Festival at the Jackson Zoo (May 29 and 30.) In September, it will be featured at the Louisiana Folklife Festival in Monroe (September 11 and 12.) Piney Woods Celebrations is also scheduled for the Clark Hall Gallery at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond; the Monroe County Heritage Museums in Alabama; the Crosby Arboretum in Picayune, Mississippi; and the Library of Hattiesburg, Petal, and Forrest County. 

For more information on the exhibit's schedule, exhibit text and sample photographs, please see Piney Woods Celebrations. 
 
 

Future Projects

Other projects in planning include a series of three- or four-minute radio spots on regional folklife. Each will spotlight a different aspect or genre of Piney Woods folk culture, featuring the voices of people carrying on these traditional arts. We also are compiling articles on Piney Woods folklife many written by fieldworkers for the regional folklife survey) that will be available on this web site as a resource on regional culture.

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