On March 24, 35 Vanderbilt students will have the opportunity to see some of the most influential locations of American music in Memphis, including the Civil Rights Museum, Sun Records, the Stax Museum of Soul Music and Beale Street. What's even better? The trip is free.
Funded by The Commons project (which has also offered trips to a Native American reservation and joined with other organizations to fund the Freedom Riders trip), this trip is sponsored by Dr. Dean Masullo of the Englishdepartment, and Robert Nasatir, a professor of Latin studies at Fisk University. The duo will take 35 Vanderbilt students, 15 Fisk students and a film documentary crew - including Kathy Conkwright, known for her award-winning documentary on the Carter family - on a one-day road trip to Memphis, a legendary city where ethnic diversity and musical history came together.
"I would recommend this trip to essentially everyone who is interested in American culture," Masullo said, "or anyone who wants to learn about the recent past and the not-so-recent past. We will be looking at the enduring questions of race, culture and citizenship in the United States."
As scholars and musicians, Masullo's and Nasatir's greatest motivation was simply to learn about Memphis through its history, music, visual arts, literature and film.
"In order to understand culture, there is a need to look at a variety of media within a historical context," Masullo said. "Culture also happens with geography. For example, when you think about Miami, you think of the Cuban culture."
According to Masullo, Memphis came to be known as the "clearing house of culture," where "race, music and citizenship," are all defined differently by the diverse people who live within the city.
In the mid-20th century, as cultures intertwined and influenced each other, there began to be a musical and stylistic exchange between white and black artists including B. B. King, Howlin' Wolf, James Cotton, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash.
"Sam Phillips at Sun Records was intensely interested in recording black artists. ... Phillips recognized the value of their music, but also longed to find a white artist who could sing as if he were black: that's where Elvis comes into the picture," Masullo said.
The incorporation of rhythm and blues into Elvis' style was so well received, however, that people today often forget that Elvis was not the innovator of this style. Yet, it was through Elvis's music that the white audience was finally exposed to what had been disparagingly labeled as "race music." From the 1920s throughout the 1960s, black artists produced jazz, blues and R&B beats that were consistently shunned by the white public. It was not until the emergence of soul during the civil rights movement in the 1960s that any real change occurred. The music signified hope and pride and served as a form of validation of the black community's cultural contributions.
As an "academic who dabbles in music as a side career," Masullo has noted how societal problems influence popular music, both in the past and the present. "So much came out of the civil rights movement on the question of race - music just ties it all together," Masullo said.
It is for this reason that the program's itinerary includes signature cultural and historic locations within Memphis such as Sun Records, Beale Street, the Stax Museum of Soul Music, the National Civil Rights Museum and finally, to top it all off, the famous barbecue restaurant, Rendezvous, which Masullo jokingly says "does ribs like nobody's business."
Masullo urges interested students to sign up as soon as possible, as seating is incredibly limited. For more information about the event, please visit Masullo's site orcontact Masullo through email.
