Mississippi creativity, told patiently.
Mississippi Arts Hour gathers long-form conversations with creative Mississippians and people connected to the state’s arts life. Its interviews move from origin stories into craft, community, memory, and the practical work of keeping art alive.
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Mississippi Arts Hour is a long-running interview program focused on the artists, musicians, writers, craftspeople, broadcasters, and cultural organizers connected to Mississippi. It has the pace of a careful conversation rather than a promotional stop. The show often begins with a clear setup, then lets the guest explain the work in their own terms. That patience is its strength. Across recent episodes, the range is wide without feeling scattered: watercolor painting, poetry, songwriting, film photography, market music, fife and drum, blues history, and Mississippi broadcasting all sit within the same broad idea of arts and culture. Rick Anderson’s appearance centers on teaching, encouragement, and the belief that art begins with simple tools and confidence. Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s conversation follows poetry back toward nighttime, nature, childhood curiosity, and a feeling of quiet companionship. Patrick Artigues talks about musical influence, performance, and the uneasy pressure to turn songs into social media content. Euphus Ruth’s episode has a tactile quality, full of traditional film photography, old camera repair, wet plate methods, and the satisfaction of figuring out how things work. The Oxford Community Market episode shows art as public atmosphere, where free weekly music turns shopping into a social gathering. The Rising Stars Fife and Drum Band conversation frames tradition as both inheritance and ongoing evolution. David Johnson’s episode approaches Mississippi blues through research, early recordings, movement, work, and the life of Booker White. Walt Grayson’s interview brings broadcasting into the same cultural frame, connecting personal memory with a career spent telling Mississippi stories. The show is most interested in how a practice forms. It asks where people came from, what shaped them, what obstacles changed their direction, and how a creative habit survives over time. It can sound reverent, but it rarely becomes stiff. The language remains accessible, the questions are plain, and the guests carry much of the meaning. For PlayNext listeners, it offers a grounded way into Mississippi culture through individual lives rather than broad slogans. It is regional in subject, but the appeal is wider: anyone interested in craft, place, tradition, and creative persistence will find a familiar rhythm here.
Made for: For listeners who enjoy thoughtful arts interviews, regional culture, creative process, and stories rooted in place. It especially fits people drawn to Mississippi music, visual art, literature, folk traditions, and public-radio pacing.
What sets it apart: The show treats Mississippi arts as a living network of makers, teachers, venues, traditions, and memories. Its strength is the unhurried space it gives guests to connect craft with biography and community context.
Each week, members of MAC's staff host The Mississippi Arts Hour, a radio program broadcast on Mississippi Public Broadcasting's FM and digital radio networks. The show features interviews with Mississippi artists, musicians, craftspeople, and others involved in arts and culture from around the state. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Patient interviews connect Mississippi music to artistic process, historical research and the practical work of sustaining a creative life.
Mississippi Arts Hour treats creative work as part of Mississippi's living geography. Its rotating hosts favor patient interviews that connect an artist's methods to education, local institutions and the practical conditions of making a career.
Wet-plate cameras, blues history: your curiosity has a whole Mississippi map to wander.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Rick Anderson links watercolor and visual art to a generous view of teaching, confidence, and creative freedom.
Rick Anderson's conversation with Larry Morrissey begins with his Arts Commission fellowship, then settles into a reflective look at what art education can preserve in a child.
A reflective conversation about Night Owl, nature, belonging, revision, and Charlie Buckley's stars.
Mississippi Arts Hour's conversation with Amy Nezukumatatl is strongest when it follows the long return behind Night Owl, a collection shaped over a decade of poems and revision as the author comes back to her home genre.
A singer-songwriter weighs artistic identity against the work of making music visible.
Patrick Artigues's path from Mississippi to New York and back gives this Mississippi Arts Hour episode a steady frame: a singer-songwriter sorting through influence, place, and identity.
A Greenville photographer links film, historic processes, and a lifelong habit of understanding how things work.
The Mississippi Arts Hour visits Greenville's E.E. Bass Center for a measured conversation with photographer Euphus Ruth, whose practice remains closely tied to film, view cameras, and historic processes. Ruth traces how Mr.
A grounded, place-aware look at Sip Culture as rural community vision made visible through shared work.
Mississippi Arts Hour visits Sip Culture in Utica by staying close to the people shaping it: founders Carlton and Brandy Turner and St. Alan Austin, who is leading its new program.
A blues biography follows Booker Bucca White from mule work and a possible rail trip toward his first recordings.
David Johnson's book on Booker Bucca White gives this Arts Hour conversation a clean thread: how a Mississippi musician found his way toward the blues.
Art historian Tamar Avishai interviews critics, curators, and writers about single paintings and ideas.
Russell Tovey and Robert Diament interview artists about their materials, biography, and process.
Cinematographer Roger Deakins and James Deakins interview film crew about the craft behind specific shots.
Robert Bound interviews artists and reviews new film, book, and music releases with critics.
Sound art from places, recordings, and memory.
Mississippi Arts Hour talks with David W.
Host Kristen Brandt interviews Walt Grayson, a veteran Mississippi broadcaster and 2025 Lifetime Achievement Governor's Arts Award recipient, about his storied career.
Host David Lewis interviews Carlton and Brandy Turner, founders of Sip Culture in Utica, Mississippi, and St.
Lauren Rhodes interviews Robert Poore, recipient of the 2025 Governor's Arts Award for Excellence in Visual Arts and Landscape Architecture, about his philosophy of hunting and propagating native plants.
Host Kristen Brandt interviews Janet Reel and Krafton Beck of the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra about receiving the Governor's Arts Awards for Excellence in Performing Arts and the orchestra's 80-year history.
Host Maria Zerang interviews Shortay and Chris Mallory of the Rising Stars Fife and Drum Band about their traditional fife and drum music, their new album, and being honored at the Governor's Arts Awards.
Larry Morrisey interviews blues musician Eddie Cotton Jr., a 2025 Governor's Arts Award recipient, about his career and background in church music.
Eric Deaton traces his Mississippi music career to moving from North Carolina at 18 and playing Sunday nights at Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint.
["Mississippi Arts Hour talks with Rick Anderson, a Clarksdale-born watercolorist and Mississippi Arts Commission fellowship recipient, about a career built from catalog sketches, music training, and decades of art teaching.", "Anderson says he taught art in Mississippi public schools for 25 years, including Coleman Junior High School in Greenville, South Natchez High School, and Jackson Public Schools, while keeping a studio practice alive.", "He names Delta State teachers Sammy Britt, Stan Topol, Mary Menendez, and Maxine Holcomb as key influences on his drawing habits, classroom discipline, and art-education approach.", "The conversation also covers Mississippi Delta landscape painting, Fabriano e Acquarello, the Mississippi Arts Colony, and gallery representation in Vicksburg and Tupelo."]
Mississippi Arts Hour talks with Amy Nezhukumatathil about Night Owl, a poetry collection organized from twilight to the crack of dawn.
Patrick Artigues tells Kristen Brandt that his EP Standing at the Door includes songs he wrote at 15 and tracks finished a year before recording, and the episode says it released March 17, 2026.
["Mississippi Arts Hour records at the E.E.
Interview with the director and music director of Oxford Community Market about how Arts Commission funding supports free weekly music and benefits the community and musicians.