Photo by David A. Geary


About the Program

My Delta Memories is an interactive educational music program for children and young adults that celebrates family and encourages young people to honor the contributions of their elders to their lives. I share positive stories about my family and sing songs from my childhood as well as contemporary inspirational songs.

The program includes storytelling, a question and answer period, and audience participation. Participants are encouraged to share stories about their own family elders, and think about why certain family members are important to them. Participants also learn about several simple percussion instruments and are invited to play during a song.

Songs include original material as well as folk, soul and gospel music. For more information, or to book me for your event, please call 708-404-8593. You may also email me at info@valenciabey.com.



How My Delta Memories Came to Be

I grew up in Chicago, but every summer during my childhood my older sister and I spent a few weeks with our maternal grandparents on their farm in Shelby, Mississippi, the heart of the Delta.

In the morning before breakfast, we would follow our grandfather, Pawpaw, around outside as he fed his cows and chickens, slopped his hogs and exercised his dogs. Sometimes we would watch our grandmother, Momo, cook breakfast and listen to her stories. In the afternoon, we would sit with Momo while she knitted or crocheted or quilted while watching her "stories" - she loved All My Children - inside the house, under the air-conditioner, away from the hot Delta sun.

Every Friday we would go to town with Pawpaw, riding in the cab of his yellow Chevy pickup truck, jerking back and forth as he maneuvered, or tried to maneuver, his manual transmission. I think my neck still hurts from all that jerking.

On Sundays, we attended church with them. Every Sunday morning Momo would cook a large breakfast because she wanted to make sure we ate enough to keep us from being hungry until supper, usually around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. While she cooked the breakfast of biscuits, rice and eggs and the oiliest sausage known to man, gospel music from ancient times would play on their radio in the living room, where we were only allowed to go to turn the stereo off. The furniture was covered in plastic and the carpet had runners all over to protect it. I think I remember bring in the living room about five times when I growing up - when company came, and on holidays.

Down the road from my grandparents was my mother's brother Uncle Jim. Uncle Jim and his wife, and the five of his seven children who still lived at home, comprised the gospel music group, The Black Family. Uncle Jim played guitar, two cousins played the piano, one played the bass, one played the drums and they all sang quite well. They sang all over the south at almost any church program they received an invitation to.

Many Saturday afternoons they would hit the road, headed for some church in some small town on some dusty road. My sister and I sometimes accompanied them, stuffed in the back of my Uncle Jim's Ford LTD station wagon along with my cousin's drum set, at least two of my cousins and Uncle Jim's guitars. And sometimes, if we were lucky, we would get to sit in lawn chairs on the back of Uncle Jim's red Chevy pickup.

When Uncle Jim wasn't traveling, he tended a rice field near his home. He was notorious for his dislike of footwear, and was the only person I knew to operate a manual transmission with his bare feet. Many days my sister and I would play with our cousings at Uncle Jim's house, and he'd come home after a long day's work, shower, pick up his electric guitar plug it in, turn up the amp and sing to himself, allowing the music to take him far from the cares of this world. I can still see him sitting on the side of his bed, strumming and humming.

Click here to listen to a clip of Sunday Morning, a song inspired by summers spent with my grandparents.






© 2005, Valencia Bey