The Southern Arts Federation (SAF), a non-profit arts organization based in Atlanta, is currently presenting it’s first ever touring exhibit in cooperation with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The exhibit is dedicated to the music and musicians of the South and is appropriately titled Rhythm & Roots.

Utilizing text panels, artifacts, fieldwork, photographs, and sound recordings, the exhibit provides context for music traditions and their relationship to community. The exhibit features an audio component that allows museum visitors to experience the voices and music of Southern music traditions.

Rhythm & Roots is currently on display in Huntingdon, TN, at the Dixie Carter Performing Arts & Academic Enrichment Center. The exhibit covers a wide range of music genres found in the south, and as one would expect bluegrass is well represented.

Rhythm & Roots showcases key Southern musicians and the instruments they play. Thus, there is a part of the exhibit dedicated to the mandolin and the Father of Bluegrass Music, Bill Monroe. Other bluegrass greats recognized with a place in the exhibit include Snuffy Jenkins, Earl Scruggs, and Wade Mainer. The exhibit also includes a great number, and variety, of instruments.

Rhythm & Roots will remain in Huntingdon, TN through August 14, 2007. It will then travel to the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, NC and be on display there from August 22 through December 31, 2007. The exhibit is then scheduled to make it’s first 2008 stop at the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in Macon, GA, with other 2008 locations to be announced soon.