Bentonia School

The Bentonia School is the country blues style of Bentonia, Mississippi, defined by minor-key open guitar tunings, most often open E minor and open D minor, over which players sing in a keening falsetto. Its songs favour eerie, droning accompaniment and dark subjects: death, the devil, troubled love and hard times. The style descends from *Henry Stuckey*, who learned the tunings from Caribbean soldiers in the First World War and taught them to *Skip James* and *Jack Owens*; today *Jimmy "Duck" Holmes* maintains the tradition at the Blue Front Cafe, the oldest surviving juke joint in Mississippi.