Memphis Music and Heritage Festival 2008

The Memphis Music and Heritage Festival is 2-day celebration of the music, culture, arts, and rhythms of the South.

For over two decades, the Center for Southern Folklore's Memphis Music & Heritage Festival has showcased artists whose music has helped define their region to the world. From urban blues to rockabilly, from folk to gospel, soul to salsa, the 2007 line-up was as diverse as ever. This year's festival takes place in Downtown Memphis, on Main Street between Peabody Place and Gayoso Avenue as well as in Peabody Place on Saturday, August 30 and Sunday, August 31, 2008. Each day the festival is held from 11 AM -
11 PM.

The Memphis Music and Heritage Festival features foods, music, arts, and dance from African, Asian, Latino, and other immigrant communities who are now very much part of Memphis' cultural fabric - think of it as contemporary southern folklore, music, foods, and dance! Between 90 and 120 artists will play on 5 music stages in front of more than 30,000 people at this year's festival. Artists may be given compensation for performances and travel/lodging when necessary.

Over 120 artists performed at on five stages at last year's festival! 2007 performers include: Bobby Rush; Kate Campbell; Joyce Cobb; Billy Lee Riley; Jason D Williams, Darrel Petties & SIP, Jim Dickinson & Friends, Roscoe Robinson, Sonny Burgess and The Pacers, Eddie Bond's Country Music Show, Blind Mississippi Morris, Big Sam's Funky Nation, Eden Brent; FreeWorld; Kenny Brown; William Lee Ellis; The Tim Terry Experience; Giant Bear; Homemade Jamz Blues Band; Devil Train; Brown Singers, Spirit of Memphis; Will Graves and soul feat. Tonya Dyson; Jumpin' Chi Chis; the Kattawar Brothers; Sensational 6; rappers Kavious, the The Priesthood Family and Willie Firecracker; Daddy Mack Blues Band; Symbiosis; Alija Trout and Mouserocket; Billy Gibson Band; Renardo Ward and The Promise; Felix Hernandez and Symbiosis; Elmo & the Shades; Susan Marshall; Orange Mound Jazz Messengers; Nathaniel Kent and Exodus; Randal Morton and Grassfire; Barbara Blue; and many more.

The Center for Southern Folklore is a private, non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve, defend, and protect the music, culture, arts, and rhythms of the South. The Center also offers music events and educational programs, maintains its multimedia archives, Folklore Store, and website.

With major support from The Assisi Foundation of Memphis, The Plough Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts among others the Center has launched A Five Year Program to digitize its Multimedia Archives. The Center's archives contain hundreds of hours of film and recorded interviews and music in addition to major historic photography collections, which Michael Taft, Head of the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress, assesses to be "one of the most extensive collections of ethnographic materials in the country. It is an important cultural treasure, and demands to be both preserved and made accessible to those outside the Center." Sponsorship from businesses and community agencies allows the festival to continue to be a free family event.