About 50 people settle onto couches and folding chairs, balancing plates piled with hot casseroles, homemade bread and heaping salads, with chocolate cake and key lime pie nearby for dessert.
Then, the music starts. On especially good nights, the audience joins in, singing along to the words they know.
“To sit in a room listening to a musician you love, surrounded by people who are into it and loving it, too, is the most amazing feeling in the world,” said Sunstroke House owner Jami Nettles. “… It’s hard to beat that feeling.”
Since 2016, Nettles has opened her historic Columbus home to traveling musicians for house concerts. In the years since, she’s hosted between 80 and 90 concerts featuring indie artists like Clay Your Hands Say Yeah, Faye Webster, Wheatus and John Paul White.
Nettles is one of many in the Golden Triangle who fits the bill of a “citizen artist.” Initially coined to describe Leonard Bernstein, the term describes artists who use music to build community and improve society. From concert organizers and conductors to musicians teaching the next generation, they take a step beyond simply making music for themselves.
“I’m doing this for everyone,” Nettles said. “… Everybody thinks, ‘What can I bring to this community?’ And by narrowing in on this mission, bringing people here who would not play here otherwise, that is a gift.”
Uniquely rich
Columbus is uniquely rich with citizen artists, and Diane Ford, director of the Suzuki Strings Program, says those musicians, teachers and organizers know and frequently collaborate with each other.
Just across town on Mac Davis Road, Steve and Kay Ellis host the Barn Concert Series in a renovated pavilion behind their home. The building, which once held wedding receptions, birthday parties and family reunions, now regularly fills with music.
The Ellis family collects donations from attendees at each show and has raised thousands since launching in 2019 for organizations like Habitat for Humanity, Loaves and Fishes and Helping Hands.
While the Ellis shows feature many local and regional musicians, Nettles often brings touring artists who might not otherwise stop in Columbus, or Mississippi at all.
Other venues provide platforms for the region’s homegrown musicians.
Just down the street from Sunstroke House, Munson and Brothers Trading Post hosts open-mic nights and small concerts on an outdoor stage strung with lights overhead. The restaurant also organizes PorchFest, an annual multiday music festival.
When the restaurant opened in 2020, owner Ryan Munson said music and art were always part of the plan.
“We just don’t have very many venues that offer a platform (for musicians), and art is always a spark for revitalization,” he said. “It’s a spark for community.”
‘It’s a dedication’
Suzuki Strings has served the community for about 40 years, teaching students of all ages, from beginners learning how to hold a bow to advanced ensemble players.
Students perform in two concerts each year and appear annually at various events. In 2017, they took that music to Carnegie Hall.
“We all have this nest egg that we’re developing and keeping it growing,” Ford said. “It’s a dedication. … I think it’s just a love for music … and connecting with different people. Everyone … has a camaraderie.”
Like Suzuki Strings, Catfish Alley Studio and Columbus Girlchoir teach young musicians, who take their music to the community. Josh Gillis’ Catfish Alley Studio provides lessons but also coordinates public performances. Cherry Dunn’s Columbus Girlchoir was founded in 2004 and performs two concerts a year.
“One thing the Girlchoir does is it brings together a group of girls to sing together who would never have an opportunity to know each other in any other way,” Dunn said.
Performers from all three of those programs have often appeared in productions at Golden Triangle Theater, said Garrett Torbert, executive director for the theater.
“That’s the beauty of theater,” Torbert said. “… You bring all these elements together under one roof and it produces this spectacle.”
Large-scale community performances offer another expression of that shared spirit.
Since 2001, Columbus Sings Messiah has gathered roughly 125 singers and a full orchestra each year to perform George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah” at Annunciation Catholic Church, organized by James Allen. The singers come together once a year for this performance – strangers and neighbors alike, filling the church with music and culminating with the Hallelujah Chorus.
But perhaps the most recognizable, and unlikely, citizen artist in the area is Edwina Williams, better known as Mother Goose.
Often donning a blue apron and a flower-filled hat, Mother Goose visits classrooms and hosts Story Time each week at the library, where she has taught generations of children about manners and responsibility through simple songs she calls “little diddys.”
While the audiences elsewhere in this article settle in quietly, waiting for the music to begin, children waiting for Mother Goose can barely contain themselves.
“It’s not talent,” Williams said. “… It’s just being around children and knowing that they love to sing, they love music and they love surprises. … They learn, and I know that’s true.”
STORY by Cadence Harvey
Photos by Deanna Robinson