Flyleaf Books to host the UNC professor who just won a Grammy

Flyleaf Books will roll out the red carpet on March 3 for a discussion featuring Grammy award-winner Bill Ferris and his project "Voices of the Mississippi." 

"Voices of the Mississippi" features the voices of music and storytelling that former UNC professor Ferris heard in the 1960s and 1970s in Mississippi. Ferris conveys these voices through multiple mediums, from CDs to a DVD to a book, all transcribed into a comprehensive box set of material.

Jamie Fiocco, owner and general manager of Flyleaf Books, said Ferris has presented his previous work at the bookstore, as well. Fiocco said this presentation is special because the comprehensive nature of the box set describes Ferris’ entire life’s work. 

“If you’ve watched and read about what he has done, he’s always had a camera or a recorder in his hand,” Fiocco said. “So I think that this is the probably the biggest and the most broadest presentation he will have given here.” 

Ferris said he wants his project to inspire and transmit the feeling of listening to great artists and storytellers of the South, who he said provide the foundation of Southern culture. 

“I hope (audience members) will just feel the beauty and power of the voices that they will hear,” Ferris said. “... The stories and music in the American South are what anchor us as people, and this talk will share a lot of that tradition with the audience.” 

Ferris said he started studying the American South before he even realized it. As a young boy growing up in Mississippi, he attended a local Black church where he learned spiritual music. As he grew older, he realized there were no books with the music recorded.

“When the families were no longer there, the music would disappear,” Ferris said. “So I began to record that musical world. That led me to recording blues singers and a wide variety of people as a folklorist. So what I started as a very young child, I’ve done all my life.” 

Ferris said he sees his role ultimately as a communicator, bridging the past to the present, which he hopes to offer for audience members at Flyleaf Books. 

UNC junior Emma Miller was a former intern with the Southern Oral History Program when she first met Ferris after sitting next to him at a staff meeting. She said after telling him where she was from, she was invited to visit his office, where he showed her books and histories about her hometown. He then encouraged her to take one of his classes.

“The next semester, I did take his class, Southern Literature and the Oral Tradition,” Miller said. “ ... It was the only class I have taken at 8 a.m., and it was because it was with Bill.... It wasn’t for my major or anything, but it was one of the most impactful classes I’ve had.” 

Miller said Ferris’ career and his work has inspired her own reflection and encouraged her to see her own life in a new way. 

“After learning that he spent his whole life studying things he found fascinating — people from his hometown, his relatives, people he grew up with, local musicians — I realized he can study his life and record it, and he made it his whole career,” Miller said. “Folklore has been super interesting to me since then, and thinking about how I can study my home and my life and the people around me and then make a whole academic career out of it.” 

Miller said she has enjoyed learning from Ferris and is excited to learn more about his latest project. 

“My boyfriend actually got me 'Voices of Mississippi' for Christmas,” Miller said. “He knows much I care about Bill and that his class really meant a lot to me.”

@madelinellis 

arts@dailytarheel.com