Art, Blues, and Community Healing: A Conversation with Chandra Williams
Interview by: Lamont Jack Pearley
In this episode of The African American Folklorist, we sit down with Chandra Williams, artist, educator, community healer, and Executive Director of Crossroads Cultural Arts Center in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Chandra is the African American Folklorist for the Month of July!
Clarksdale is known around the world as the “Home of Blues Music,” a place often surrounded by mythology, tourism, and popular ideas about the Blues. But in this conversation, we move beyond the myth of Clarksdale and into the breathing reality of Black community life, cultural memory, and African-rooted practices that continue to shape the region.
Williams’ work centers art as a tool for transformation. Through Crossroads Cultural Arts Center, she creates space for community healing, cultural restoration, and Black narrative power. Her work reminds us that the Blues is more than music. It is memory. It is identity. It is survival. It is one of many African cultural practices that continue to live in Mississippi today.
This episode explores how art can help communities reclaim their stories, restore their cultural practices, and create change without waiting on institutions to define or approve their vision. Williams speaks from her experience as an artist, educator, organizer, and cultural worker whose practice is rooted in community care and self-determined transformation.
We also discuss Williams’ background in printmaking, drawing, critical theory, and community education, along with her Follow the Edge method, an observational drawing practice that deepens awareness, perception, and connection. Through this work, drawing becomes more than a technical skill. It becomes a way of seeing, listening, healing, and understanding the world differently.
At the heart of this episode is a powerful question: What happens when Black communities reclaim art, Blues, and African cultural practices as tools for healing and liberation?
Join us for this meaningful conversation with Chandra Williams as we explore art, Blues, cultural memory, and the ongoing work of community transformation in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
