A new release from Dust to Digital is always something to get excited about. They pour a lot of effort into not just the recordings but also the presentation of their releases. Music of Morocco still remains one of my favourites although their latest offering Voices of Mississippi (out on June 1st) is sure to be a close runner.
The new release, presented in a cigar box containing 120-page book with 3 CDs, 1 DVD, represents the life’s work of William Ferris, an audio recordist, filmmaker, folklorist, and teacher with an unwavering commitment to establish and to expand the study of the American South.
William Ferris was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1942. Growing up on a working farm, Ferris began at a young age documenting the artwork, music, and lives of the people on the farm and in his local community. The archive of recordings that he created and the documentary films that he had a hand in producing have served as powerful tools in institutions of higher learning for decades.
It is with great excitement that we present these films and recordings. Our hope is that the enjoyment and educational value that has been received by Ferris’s students over the years will be transmitted to listeners around the world and further the understanding of Southern culture.
Dust to Digital recently shared the video for “Four Women Artists” which explores the artistic process through the eyes of four women—Eudora Welty (writer), Pecolia Warner (quilt maker), Ethel Mohamed (needlework stitchery), and Theora Hamblett (painter). The film also suggests how literary and folk worlds connect through the creative work of four women. Eudora Welty’s fiction is inspired and informed by the work she did as a photographer and writer with the Farm Security Administration. During that period, she discovered folk worlds like those of Warner, Mohamed, and Hamblett that inspired her fiction.
