From the first, Arkansas music mattered. You see it in fragments of cane flutes, whistles older than Columbus. The oldest image of an Arkansas musician may be a man carrying a rattle on a Quapaw buffalo robe; the oldest recorded Arkansas sound may be a 1928 string band from the Ozarks. There's a crazy-quilt variety—ballad singers side-by-side with bluesmen, rockers in outrageous Spandex with pistol-toting cowgirls, zoot-suited jazzmen next to grave-faced gospel quartets. Listen to the Arkansas music—let it "send you back to Arkansas."
Get our Arkansas music CD-ROM for your classroom.
See the Fall 1995 issue of the Arkansas News devoted to "Music in Arkansas."
Purchase the book Our Own Sweet Sounds online.
Also learn about Arkansas photographers at the Geleve Grice exhibit.
Next: A Photographer of Note: Arkansas Artist Geleve Grice »