About BHEF

Keeping the Blues Alive — By Passing It On

The Blues Heritage & Education Foundation (BHEF) is a Gulfport, Mississippi-based nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving, teaching, and carrying forward the blues traditions of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

We believe the blues is more than music. It is history, craftsmanship, storytelling, community, and a living cultural tradition passed from one generation to the next.

Our work is rooted here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and focused on helping ensure that the people, stories, skills, and traditions that shaped this culture are not simply remembered — but practiced, taught, documented, and carried forward.

Our Mission

To preserve the blues and pass it to the next generation by sharing authentic voices, teaching its lessons, and building sustainable opportunities for Gulf Coast artists.

Our Vision

A Gulf Coast where the blues isn’t just remembered but lived — through storytelling, teaching, craftsmanship, and performance rooted in the community.

What We Do

BHEF brings heritage and education together through hands-on learning, cultural documentation, storytelling, and community engagement.

Our developing work includes:

• Hands-on folk arts and traditional craftsmanship education
• Cigar box guitar building and music education
• Oral histories and cultural storytelling
• Documentation of Gulf Coast artists, venues, traditions, and community stories
• Educational workshops and intergenerational learning
• Performances and community-based cultural programming
• Partnerships with artists, educators, cultural organizations, and community institutions

Our goal is not simply to preserve artifacts from the past. We want the knowledge behind them to remain alive.

A traditional skill survives when someone learns how to do it. A story survives when someone records it. A musical tradition survives when another generation understands where it came from and has an opportunity to make it their own.

Rooted on the Mississippi Gulf Coast

Mississippi is internationally recognized for its blues heritage, but some of the stories of the Gulf Coast remain less documented and less visible than those of other parts of the state.

BHEF is intentionally rooted in Gulfport and the surrounding Mississippi Gulf Coast.

We seek to preserve the voices and experiences of the musicians, craftspeople, venues, churches, neighborhoods, businesses, families, and communities that have helped create and sustain the Coast’s musical culture.

This is our home, and we believe preservation begins in the community where the culture lives.

Heritage Through Hands-On Education

One of BHEF’s first major initiatives focuses on the tradition and craftsmanship of the cigar box guitar.

BHEF has received a Fiscal Year 2027 Organization Project Grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission to support a folk-arts education program centered on cigar box guitars.

Through this developing initiative, BHEF is building the knowledge and capacity needed to offer hands-on educational experiences that connect instrument craftsmanship, music, history, and cultural tradition.

It represents the kind of preservation BHEF believes in: not simply displaying an instrument behind glass, but teaching someone how it is made, why it matters, and how to carry the tradition forward.

Preserving the Stories, Too

Not every part of blues heritage can be held in your hands.

Some of it lives in memories.

BHEF is also developing After the Smoke Clears: Gulf Coast Blues Reporting Initiative, a cultural documentation and storytelling project designed to preserve conversations, memories, performances, and community histories connected to Gulf Coast blues culture.

The project is intended to document more than performers. Its broader focus includes the people, venues, businesses, traditions, neighborhoods, and informal networks that have helped sustain the culture.

Because when a story disappears with the person who lived it, a piece of our history disappears with it.

Heritage. Education. Community.

Those three words define BHEF.

We honor the people who came before us.

We create opportunities for people to learn today.

And we work so that another generation will have something authentic to inherit tomorrow.

The Blues Heritage & Education Foundation is committed to helping keep Gulf Coast blues where it belongs:

Not only in history books.

Not only in museums.

But in the hands, voices, stories, and communities of the people who will carry it forward.