The New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music exhibit is a cultural history of America’s Musical Landscape. It’s the story of a diverse mix of people interacting with the New World, a world where cultures and customs met, mixed, and mingled to create new sounds. The distinct cultural identities of all these peoples are carried in song – both sacred and secular – and the music that emerges is known by names like blues, country, western, folk, and gospel.

New Harmonies tracks the unique history of many peoples reshaping each other into one incredibly diverse and complex people – Americans. It also promises a fascinating, inspiring, and toe-tapping listen to the American story of cultural exchange with its multi-media components. As a unique traveling exhibition, it is full of surprises about familiar songs, histories of instruments, the roles of religion and technology in shaping new sounds, and the continuity of musical roots from the colonial period to modern day punk and hip-hop.

New Harmonies will display daily between 10:00AM and 4:00PM, November 17, 2007 – January 5, 2008.

The Mendota Museum & Historical Society will be sponsoring a number of programs leading up to and continuing through the time that the exhibition is in Mendota. The Society is also looking for items to share with the public which relate to the roots of music. Call 815.539.3373, if you have items you wish to share.

For more information, please contact Shirley Pierson at 815.539.3373 or visit MendotaMuseums.org.