The blues gets the attention, but Mississippi's musical past is wider than any single genre. Old-time string band music, built on fiddle, banjo, and guitar, once filled dance halls and front porches across the state, drawing on both Black and white traditions. For decades it survived mainly among specialists. Lately it has found a wider audience.

The revival is most visible in college towns, where string band nights have become fixtures at bars and coffeehouses, but it reaches into smaller communities as well. Young players are drawn to the music's communal nature. Unlike a rock band, a string band can absorb anyone who shows up with an instrument and a willingness to keep time.

That openness is central to its appeal. "It's not a performance so much as a conversation," one fiddler said. "You sit in a circle and you listen and you answer." The tunes are old, often centuries old, but the social experience feels novel to players raised on solitary practice.

The scene remains small and its economics negligible, more hobby than industry. But its growth points to a hunger for music made in person, together, without a screen in sight.