Welcome to the Center for Southern Folklore at Southernfolklore.com.  We're a private non-profit organization dedicated to documenting and presenting the people, music and traditions of the region.

This website is our way to meet you and let you know about the Memphis/Delta Region through the experiences, music, lifestyles, arts and foods of the men and women, young and old who we've talked to and learned from since the early 1970s.

Along the way we've created films, recordings, exhibits; produced festivals and events that provide snapshots of the changing South.  We've collected images, sounds and artifacts to preserve and share this heritage.  We've used many venues and lots of equipment to make this happen: from 16 mm films to digital media, from long playing records to sound files, from typewriters to computers.  Yet, our goal has always been the same:  to make the South we know available for access and understanding by future generations.

With the long time support of the Tennessee Arts Commission and recent generous grants from local and national organizations:  The Assisi Foundation of Memphis and The Plough Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Park Service in association with the National Endowment for the Humanities (Saving America's Treasures) - we've begun to digitize these narratives, photographs, and artifacts providing an important cultural resource that describes our region.  Many of these images and sounds are available to you here in our on-line galleries.

This website is our letter head, our media center, our way for you to know and enjoy the men, women and children that make the world of southernfolklore.com.

We hope you visit us often.

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