31st Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival

2009 Poster Contest

The 2009 Mississippi Delta Blues & Heritage Festival Poster Constest is offically open. For offical rules please click >>> here

2008 Mississippi Delta Blues & Heritage Festival Poster Contest Winner

Purchase the 2008 Blues Festival Poster

The official poster for the 31st Annual Mississippi Delta Blues & Heritage Festival was unveiled on July 22, 2008 along with the announcement of the poster contest winner.

Tony Davenport of Jackson, Mississippi was selected as the winner of the 2008 Poster Contest.

Tony's art work was chosen out of the 23 submissions received. Please click on Tony's Bio to read more about Tony Davenport.

2008 Poster Contest Entrants

The Mississippi Delta Blues & Heritage Festival would like to thank those persons who entered the 2008 Poster Contest. For a full list of entrants please click >>> here

Delta Blues Festival Updates

For daily festival updates, please click on the "Latest News" link on the left menu bar.

September 19, 2009 is the big day of the Festival

The purpose of the Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival is to reach a worldwide audience with a celebration of the contributions the Mississippi Delta Blues culture has made to the American story - and to help preserve that culture.

Mississippi Delta Blues is globally recognized as one of the most America's important musical forms. A major catalyst for American popular culture, it exists in both a folk context and as a product of the commercial music industry. In the face of a historically brutal social experience, black folk in America affirmed their humanity by remembering and creating a rich expressive culture of poetry, tales, crafts, ritual, dance and music. This system embodied techniques of cultural transmission, transformation, adaptation and survival. Early Blues developed out of this rich fabric and cross-fertilized the work-songs, love-songs, slow drags, rags and spirituals. Delta Blues soon became the emotional and literary voice of black singers across the south.

Ironically, black and poor people from the Mississippi Delta, who gave the world the Blues, had limited access to traditional or contemporary institutional arts and cultural programming. The products of most rural peoples' art are inaccessible to them. They are housed in urban academic institutions and archives. They need to be preserved and showcased to larger general audiences as the legacy of a living culture.

While this art form was being celebrated internationally, the Delta region was still one of the poorest regions in the country. In 1976, Mississippi Action for Community Education, Inc. (MACE) saw the need to help create financing for educational programs and gave birth to the Delta Blues & Heritage Festival.

The success of the Delta Blues & Heritage Festival spurred the creation of festivals all over the Delta.

Thanks to our sponsors. Click on any sponsor to visit sponsor's page.