The theme of this year’s Southern Foodways Symposium is the “Cultivated South.” As usual, this annual syposium, hosted by the University of Mississippi’s Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA), is sold out. But those still wishing for a little culture can attend Sunday’s free performance of Leaves of Greens, an opera revolving around collard greens.
The opera, based on Leaves of Greens: The Collard Poems, was commissioned by SFA and written by Price Walden, a 20-year-old junior music major at Ole Miss.
Walden took some time to answer questions about Leaves of Greens.
There’s much more to Southern food than greens. Why not Moon Pies or biscuits and gravy?
Well, the short answer to this question is that they told me to write about collard greens, but there are many good reasons. To me, Moon Pies or biscuits and gravy can’t come close to the history and symbolism we find in the collard green. What makes collard greens even more interesting is that they aren’t universally beloved. For every person out there who loves them, there’s another person out there who can’t even stand the smell, but they instantly conjure up many images and memories for us Southerners.
