
"'Now don't you feel smarter already?'"
“We raise corn, hell, and fiddlers,” one feisty old-time fiddler told a newspaper reporter in 1920, “and we had a pretty good crop this year, all around.” Since its inception, we’ve tried to make “Up Beat Down South” a place where such infectious enthusiasm for music comes to life, and to suggest the energy, richness, and breadth of Southern music-making. But even if inclusion is the dominant theme running through a column still in its brash youth, recent events in tow southern states remind us that there are powerful cultural urges that resist placing all musical forms on equal footing.