Portrait of a Juke Joint
What happens when a community desperate for any economic opportunity begins to package its history, declare its authenticity, and invite tourists to come experience a piece of the past?
This is the question cultural tourism development must answer, and it’s a question I learned through ten plus years of documenting Willie Seaberry’s juke joint Po’ Monkey’s Lounge.
Preservation and presentation of the people and places of a specific region is a complex dance. Often more is involved than most want to admit, and just as oil and gas and water are natural resources, so are the histories and traditions of deep cultural roots. And just as oil, gas, and water can be exhausted if extracted without concern for sustainability, so too can rich cultural experiences be washed away until their origin is no longer recognizable. When this happen, history is skewed, as cultural tourists assume their modern experience to be the equivalent of past creation.
This project explores what it means to build an economy from the roots of a tortuous past.
