The Blues is so much more than the connotation of the word blue...the Blues is a cultural phenomenon, born to American sharecroppers from the Mississippi Delta. Americans who suffered deeply from the toils of their massive labor and incalculable loss of loves known too dear…but, found in lyrics anchored in African rhythms and ole-time Spiritual melodies that embrace the hope of joy and survival …The Blues are stories that document the physical and spiritual reclamation of the American soul.

MACE is a community-based 501 c(3) not-for-profit organization created in 1967, by people dedicated to community enrichment and the preservation of the Delta Blues. It was their vision to create programs that stimulated physical, social, and economic development in the rural Mississippi Delta. One of the goals of MACE is to enlighten audiences worldwide about the Mississippi Delta Blues and African American culture.

MACEs mission is exemplified in the cultural programming of the Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival (MDBHF). The purpose of the Delta Blues and Heritage Festival is to reach a worldwide audience with a celebration of the contributions the African Americans in the Mississippi Delta made to the American story - and to help preserve that culture for the world’s enrichment. Ours is a teaching festival which facilitates the promotion of the Blues as an art form and as an American Treasure that must be nurtured and cherished. With your help, MACE will continue to be in the forefront of promoting and keeping this National Treasure “alive and well” and growing.

To that end, we invite your participation as a presenter/facilitator of the Blues in Schools program. This is the kind of program that will accomplish our mandate to reach and educate young people about the Blues, throughout our country and even the world. The plan is to visit your school with projects that challenge students to find creative ways of writing, singing and staging aspects of the blues, in innovative ways. I am eager to share with you some of the “new” cultural enrichment programs, we have developed for your students, through lessons learned and documented by artists from the great African & American traditions that brought us the Blues.