On today's episode, Jason talks with Esther Morgan-Ellis about Foster’s memory in the state of Florida. Esther is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Georgia, but in her travels further south she discovered a unique history of pageantry and music-making at the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in White Springs, Florida. Esther studies and writes about participatory music-making practices of the past and present. In our conversation she offers unique insight into how a chance lyric in a famous Foster song and an apocryphal story about his antebellum travels to the South created an annual singing competition in the mid-twentieth century that still reverberates in Florida today.
To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com.