Jordan Nettles – Lemuria Books

By Jordan Nettles. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (June 10)

Mississippi is often seen as the birthplace of American music. Many Mississippi musicians have achieved international fame, while others remain well-kept and beloved secrets. Regardless, each musician enriches the cultural heritage of the state while leaving a mark on genres like the blues, jazz, country, rock, and more.

The Jazz Pilgrimage of Gerald Wilson (University Press of Mississippi) by Steven Loza features a Shelby native who made immense contributions to jazz. Part biography and part musical analysis, this book explores the robust life and work of a jazz legend who has, up until now, been largely overlooked. The Jazz Pilgrimage of Gerald Wilson is an essential step in recognizing this master musician, arranger, composer, educator, and bandleader.

Gerald Wilson (1918-2014) was born in a region of the United States that is well-known for its music: the Mississippi Delta. Wilson became “very obsessed with jazz” at a young age and embarked on a self-described “jazz pilgrimage.” This artistic journey took him around the world and brought him into the same circle as influential jazz figures like Jimmie Lunceford, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dizzy Gillespie.

Sources for this book range from liner notes and essays to interviews and a spoken word CD. Loza weaves all of these into a seamless narrative, creating a vivid picture of Wilson’s life. The book includes stories from every stage of Wilson’s career, from his time playing in the Navy Band to his ten albums with Pacific Jazz Records.

The interviews between Loza and Wilson are engaging for any general reader. In the interview chapters, Wilson describes his life in his own words and Loza adds poignant context. Later in the book, Loza offers detailed analyses of some of Wilson’s compositions, which will especially appeal to jazz scholars and students.

In his life and work, Wilson searched for “new ideas” and challenged the boundaries around him. Stylistically, Wilson incorporated musical progressions that no jazz musician had used before. Wilson’s unique sound was partly inspired by his Mexican-American wife and partly inspired by the bullfighters that fascinated him. He blended traditional jazz and Latin American music styles to create a sound that inspired listeners—and musicians—regardless of their race or music genre. One of Wilson’s most well-known pieces, “Viva Tirado,” was eventually recorded by the Latin rock group El Chicano and later adapted into a rap by Kid Frost.

Wilson’s desire for progress was not restricted to his music. He pushed against racial segregation around the country, once telling his band, “Tonight, we’re going to break the color line,” before leading them into a Las Vegas casino in the 1950s. At the conclusion of the book, Jeri Wilson, one of Gerald Wilson’s daughters, describes her father’s pride in being a jazz musician and an African American. His pride and passion for both are impossible to miss in The Jazz Pilgrimage of Gerald Wilson.

Gerald Wilson believed in the power of jazz music, and music in general, to connect people. Wilson’s music certainly brought people together in many different ways. If you are not currently familiar with Gerald Wilson, get ready. This book will likely make you a fan.

Jordan Nettles is a graduate of The University of Southern Mississippi and the Columbia Publishing Course in New York.

‘Southern Splendor’ explores the restoration of pre-Civil War homes

By Guest Author

On May 9, 2018

In Southern Culture, Southern History

By Jordan Nettles. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (May 6)

In Southern Splendor: Saving Architectural Treasures of the Old South (University Press of Mississippi), historians Marc R. Matrana, Robin S. Lattimore, and Michael W. Kitchens celebrate pre-Civil War homes across the American South. The authors document stories of these homes, with chapters devoted to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The book includes 391 pages and over 275 photographs that showcase the beauty of the historic houses. Selected because of their architectural styles and restoration stories, the nearly fifty homes in Southern Splendor have overcome all types of hardships, from natural disasters and vandalism to abandonment.

The walls of every pre-Civil war home have witnessed a myriad of stories, and Southern Splendor captures many fascinating ones. There are accounts of the slave labor that allowed the houses to be built, the lives of the wealthy owners and their families, the tragedies that pressed the homes toward destruction, the restorations that saved them, and the cultural and economic roles the homes now play. These narratives make the homes feel like dynamic characters of history rather than static pieces of the background.

The detailed descriptions of the exterior and interior features are interesting and establish the book as a must-own for any fan of Southern architecture. Accompanying these descriptions are breathtaking photographs of the grand homes. Flip to almost any page, and you’ll find the image of an imposing portico and columns or of an interior room, complete with a striking chandelier and ornate furniture.

As the book notes, the homes of Southern Splendor are “survivors.” Countless other colonial and antebellum homes have not been as fortunate. The authors insist that by letting historic homes deteriorate, we lose vital pieces of the past and irreplaceable resources for understanding our nation’s history. The intersections between these homes and history are extensive.

The book features several homes whose former occupants, such as Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson Davis, are tightly woven into the fabric of American history. Then, there is the strikingly significant Whitney Plantation, a monument and museum of slavery that deals unflinchingly with the South’s difficult history and ensures that the horrors of slavery are never forgotten.

Most of the homes in Southern Splendor are well cared for and open to the public, so it’s hard to believe that many of them were nearly lost forever. Words like “disrepair,” and “dilapidated” are associated with even the most magnificent houses. Without the work of concerned individuals, communities, and organizations, the homes in this book may not exist today.

There’s something exciting about seeing a familiar location celebrated in a book. I have visited the House on Ellicott’s Hill in Natchez and Arlington House in Virginia and enjoyed reading about their histories and architecture. Residents across the South will likely find familiar homes in Southern Splendor. Equally enjoyable is discovering new gems. My personal favorite discovery was Laura House, a unique creole plantation in Louisiana that was run mostly by women.

Southern Splendor brings the included homes to life and makes a solid case for the importance of preservation and restoration. While admiring the beautiful houses, readers will likely find several new destinations to add to their bucket lists.

Jordan Nettles is a graduate of The University of Southern Mississippi and the Columbia Publishing Course in New York.

Poet and photographer team to create a witness to ‘Mississippi’

By Guest Author

On March 6, 2018

In Photography, Poetry

By Jordan Nettles. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (February 25)

In Mississippi, 47 poems by Ann Fisher-Wirth and 47 color photographs by Maude Schuyler Clay delve into the history, culture, and ecology of the state of Mississippi. The book is a gorgeous large-format hardback, with equally stunning words and images inside.

mississippi

Both Fisher-Wirth and Clay have spent much of their lives in Mississippi. Clay is a seventh-generation Mississippian and Fisher-Worth has lived in the state for 30 years. Fisher-Worth, born in Washington D.C., has taught at the University of Mississippi since first moving to Mississippi in 1988. She has written scholarly works and books of poems, including Dream Cabinet, Carta Marina, Five Terraces, and Blue Window. Clay, born in Greenwood, Mississippi, has had photos published in Esquire, Fortune, and Vanity Fair, and included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art. She is also the photographer of Delta Land and Delta Dogs, both published by University Press of Mississippi. During their time in Mississippi, Fisher-Wirth and Clay have gathered visual and linguistic experiences that are revealed in their poems and photographs.

Each poem in Mississippi is matched with a photo, both pieces working together to tell a story of Mississippi. Fisher-Wirth has said that most of the poems in the book were written to accompany a photograph previously taken by Clay. Fisher-Wirth then penned poems “spoken in voices of fictive characters” that suggested themselves to her as she pondered the photos. Although fictitious, the voices sometimes cross with important events of Mississippi and American history, such as the Civil Rights Movement. There are poems dealing with the murder of Emmett Till and other tragedies that occurred during the same time period. Other poems in the books are inspired by students, neighbors, and other Mississippians that Fisher-Wirth has known personally. The voices represented are as varied as Mississippi itself, racially and socioeconomically.

Fisher-Wirth and Clay explore several facets of Mississippi, including how race and the environment interact. The book stresses that, “Mississippi suffers from severe environmental degradation that cannot be separated from its history of poverty and racial oppression.” Despite this difficult history and inherent complexity, the natural beauty of Mississippi can’t be denied. Also undeniable is the beauty of Mississippi’s identity–an identity that’s made up of many unique voices that are honored and explored in this book. True reflections of the beauty and complexity in Mississippi, the poems and photos will likely feel familiar to native Mississippians and will provide a glimpse into the realities of Mississippi to non-natives.

Although voice is an important part of Mississippi, actual Mississippians are only the subject of one photograph. Instead, most of the photos capture awe-inspiring sights in nature and every-day objects that Mississippians will recognize. Included are images of swamps, open fields, trees, falling-apart buildings, dogs, and the interiors of quintessentially Southern homes. A personal favorite photo depicts a type of hide away built into the side of a hill in the woods. Haunting and captivating, the photos are authentic representations of what it feels like to be part of Mississippi.

The epigraph for the book is taken from Theodore Roethke’s “North American Sequence”: “The imperishable quiet at the heart of form.” The quietness in Clay’s photos influenced Fisher-Wirth as she listened for voices to use in her poems. Likewise, Mississippi invites the reader to listen for those voices and to reflect on the stories at the heart of the poems and photographs.

Mississippi is a stunning testament to the spirit of Mississippi.

Jordan Nettles is a graduate of The University of Southern Mississippi and the Columbia Publishing Course in New York. She is marketing assistant at University Press of Mississippi in Jackson.

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Join in on ‘The Jazz Pilgrimage of Gerald Wilson’ by Steven Loza

‘Southern Splendor’ explores the restoration of pre-Civil War homes

Poet and photographer team to create a witness to ‘Mississippi’

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