Grammy-winning blues musician Cedric Burnside — known for mixing gritty North Mississippi blues with contemporary influences including soul and hip-hop — will perform this Saturday at the Carver Community Cultural Center’s Jo Long Theatre.
The son of blues drummer Calvin Jackson and the grandson of singer-guitarist R.L. Burnside, the the younger Burnside began touring as a drummer in his teens and has performed with artists ranging from Jessie Mae Hemphill and T-Model Ford to Widespread Panic and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. He also learned from revered bluesman Junior Kimbrough, a family friend.
Burnside began releasing critically acclaimed records as a bandleader, singer and guitarist in the 2000s. His 2021 long-player I Be Trying won a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album, and around that time, he also won a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship, the U.S. government’s highest honor for folk artists.
Featuring an emotional vocal delivery backed by finger-picked electric guitar, Burnside offers a modern adaptation of the North Mississippi’s hill country blues, a rural sound characterized by hypnotic rhythms and a focus on groove over chord changes.
“Cedric Burnside carries the mantle — the joy and the burdens and the history of the North Mississippi hill country blues, a style like no other in Southern music,” The Bitter Southerner magazine wrote of the artist.
The Carver’s current performance schedule will conclude Saturday, June 1, with a sold-out performance by jazz singer Samara Joy, a multiple Grammy winner.
$36, 8 p.m. Saturday, May 11, Carver Community Cultural Center Jo Long Theatre, 226 N. Hackberry St., (210) 207-2234, thecarver.org.
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This article appears in May 1-14, 2024.
