A rich portrait of the community that is Arkansas, manifested in song, Our Own Sweet Sounds celebrates the diversity of musical forms and music makers that have graced the state since territorial times. Beginning with the earliest references to Quapaw and Caddo music as first reported by seventeenth-century European explorers and continuing forward to the "bizarrely named grunge bands" who will be stars tomorrow, Cochran traces the music and voices that have enriched the life of the "natural state". Originally produced as a museum exhibit, this catalog is published by the University of...

This book is a lyrical, scholarly exploration of the connection between one family's musical traditions and its rural community of Zion, Arkansas. In 1959, three Gilbert sisters -- Alma, Helen, and Phydella -- began compiling songs they remembered as their own and sending them to one another in letters. Their tendency to center memory in sound rather than sight reveals an unusual musical birthright.

Robert Cochran has constructed a composite portrait of this family for whom music is the center of life. He examines their lived experience as they anchor their history through song, singing,...

Robert Cochran describes how three sisters came to define themselves through their music and how the family's musical traditions connected them to their rural community.

Ordinary life through an extraordinary lens In a selection of more than one hundred black and white images taken over a period of sixty years, this book bears witness to the life of a remarkable photographer and to small-town African American life in the middle of the twentieth century. Geleve Grice was born and raised near Pine Bluff, and he has documented the ordinary life of his community: parades, graduations, weddings, club events, and whatever else brought people together. In the process he has created a remarkable historical portrait of an African American community. Through his lens...