Through a partnership with the Meek School of Journalism and New Media, former Mississippi Public Broadcasting executive director Marie Antoon has produced Oxford Sounds.
Mississippi has long been known for producing some of the greatest artists ranging from multiple genres that include the blues as well as country. The city of Oxford gained fame from producing some of the great writers of this country. Now Oxford is about to gain some exposure for its growing musical culture.
Many artists from around the state and country gravitate to Oxford to perform at the famous Lyric theatre and Thacker Mountain Radio as well as record music in some of the best studios. The new program, Oxford Sounds, will highlight those artists coming in and doing studio sessions and modeling after the successful music series Austin City Limits in Austin, Texas.
“I spent eight years in Jackson as the executive director of MPB and a lot of people would come to me and say Mississippi is the home of so much great music and we need to showcase them in the same way that Austin does Austin City Limits,” Antoon said.
The series will air weekly and this past week the series aired its first program as a part of a pledge program.
Part of the proceeds for the show from viewers will go towards the journalism school. Journalism school dean Will Norton actually approached Antoon with an opportunity to teach a documentary class years ago. Although she didn’t teach a class, she did propose using journalism students and equipment to help film and work on the project.
“Without the journalism school this would not be possible,” Antoon said.
For the last two years students have been working effortlessly to produce this program. One student who worked on the project was journalism senior Chloe Bagley, who got involved because of her journalism experience.
“I enjoyed it a lot,” Bagley said. “I got to listen to a lot of music that I never would have heard if it weren’t for that and it was very educational to film and work with everyone.”
Professional videographers were on set as well. This allowed the students to learn and gain experience at the same time.
Some of the artists featured in the series are Duff Dorrough, Jimbo Mathus, Blue Mountain, American Aquarium, Luke Winslow-King, Jason Turner, Will Sexton and many more.
The songs recorded in the program will also be available on iTunes, and the proceeds will benifit the journalism school.
“I’m really excited about the program and I think it’s a good program,” Norton said. “From what I can tell I believe it’s going to brand the school if it’s successful, as I believe it will be. With Marie’s skills and the students’ work it will be great. It could give us some great national exposure.”
