The whole thing has been in the works for nearly five years. The Recording Academy wanted to expand their brand outside of Southern California and after extensive thought and planning (plus a fair amount of lobbying of course), they selected Cleveland as the location. The museum is physically located on Delta State’s campus and sits right next to Highway 8. The University put in a lot of work, including relocating part of its golf course, and leased the land to the Recording Academy. Actual construction started early last year and after several delays, culminated in the opening ceremonies on Saturday.

On the inside the museum is wonderfully sleek and modern. Far from being a collection of dusty old records, there are dozens of computer terminals presenting information from the history of the Grammy awards to the history of the music industry. There’s a recording booth, a dance floor, and even a set of instruments which play into headphones. The designers even included a section devoted to the history of music in Mississippi. It is equal parts entertainment and education making for fun for the whole family. Best of all much of the museum, if not all of it, is unique to our location. So rather than air dropping the one from LA into the middle of the Delta, the designers created something special which reflects the rich history of the region. Sadly I have few pictures of the inside. I only saw it briefly a few days prior to the official opening and did not get a chance to really explore much.

Right about now many of you are wondering exactly how the second branch of the Grammy museum ended up here instead of New York, Memphis, or Nashville. Part of the answer seems to be the local chamber of commerce. When the Recording Academy began looking into locating their new branch in Mississippi, key figures in the chamber supposedly began lobbying for it to be located in Cleveland. Sadly I don’t have much more inside baseball although the town is said to have contributed a significant amount of money to the museum’s construction. However the location is definitely appropriate given the significance of the region. The Delta Blues was invented nearby at Dockery Farms.   Many great Blues musicians came from the Delta and so it has a rich history. Since Cleveland is geographically in the center of it along its major thoroughfare the Grammy Museum would be just the thing to get people to stay in town for a while. So a lot of folks have been excited by this for quite some time.

Privately, however, people seem skeptical. Cleveland is still two hours from the nearest airport. There is still little to do around here beyond Delta State and the Blues Trail. So it is hard to imagine tourists flying in from across the country just to visit the Grammy Museum. Perhaps Blues tourists will be motivated to give Cleveland a second look, but not many people are expecting success.

All the same, these sorts of things can thrive in small towns. Cooperstown is one-tenth the size of Cleveland and pretty much in the middle of nowhere yet the Baseball Hall of Fame is located there. Jackson, NJ is similarly far from anything yet Six Flags Great Adventure is there. And Mount Rushmore is in a more isolated location than Cleveland. So an optimist can say the Grammy Museum stands a chance.

Then again, maybe not? We need to remember this is the Delta. Cooperstown has a quaint charm to it and is located not terribly far from an interstate highway in upstate New York. Six Flags is also located near a highway and has the advantage of being in the Northeast corridor not far from Philadelphia. And Mount Rushmore is, well a mountain. Profitable or not it is going to be there for the next 100,000 years or so.

To be honest I’m not sure which side I’m on. The Grammy Museum is awesome and having it here is a helluva coup for a small town. But the criticism is well taken. The Delta is the Delta and I doubt even a great new museum will substantially change its fate. The region is still dealing with decades of out-migration and under-investment which have left much of it desolate. I am confident the Grammy Museum can spur some growth and business for the area, but the long term trends are what they are. It is going to take much more work to change them.

1. http://www.grammymuseum.org/explore/about-us

The Atlantic recently ran an article about the Delta.  Titled “How White Flight Ravaged the Mississippi Delta” it chronicles how the out migration of affluent white residents has hurt the region. The tl;dr version is: a lot.  Driving through the Delta feels like stepping back in time.  This part of the country feels frozen in time. People have been leaving for years a fact which can be seen in run down buildings and empty streets.  The Atlantic does a good job of showing that.

However there are a few problems I have with the article.  First of all the writer doesn’t seem to have a solid idea of  where the region begins and ends. Its boundaries are the Mississippi River to the west and the Yazoo River to the east from Vicksburg north to the suburbs of Memphis.  So while Tchula is indeed a Delta town, Philadelphia, MS is not.

More importantly, the situation in the Delta is complex.  Its telling that whenever journalists come through they never mention the town I live in.  Cleveland is a thriving college town which attracts people from all over the world.  We’ve got a strong local culture and a lot of stores and restaurants.  It is not your average Delta town.  Furthermore there are efforts, such as the Grammy Museum opening this year to improve the situation.  Farming is also big business which is why the USDA has a huge research lab down in Stoneville.  The Delta also attracts tourists looking to explore the history of the Blues as well as Teach for America Corps members.

Yet the broader picture is not so rosy.  Cleveland’s success proves The Atlantic right in many ways. Not every town can have a university.  And while the hope is that the Grammy Museum will bring in more tourists that is in the future.  Based on how hard it is to find the existence of the museum on their website, I am not encouraged.   Hopefully my doubts will be proven wrong.  So while there are some bright spots, the Delta is still a deeply impoverished placed.

And there are macroeconomic trends to consider as well.  The article quotes a hardware store owner as saying “We need everything. But now we need police cars foremost. Our streets need to be redone. We need to try to find somebody to open some businesses. Nobody is really coming in until we get our infrastructure improved”.  That’s a problem too.  For all the attention the Delta gets from TFA and Blues travelers there is little to actually attract businesses.  Again Cleveland is an exception in this regard.  But most towns are decaying fast.  Without some sort of government assistance its hard to imagine life turning around.  Perhaps that’s for the best.  The Delta has some of the most fertile soil in the country and so maybe its wide open spaces should remain that way.  I don’t have many answers to these questions and increasingly don’t seek them.  It is the way it is around here and only time will tell if life will ever change,