Faculty Director Andy Flory, who will lead Music in the American South, shares some of the distinct learning experiences that characterize this Winter 2026 program.
What inspired you to plan “Music in the American South”?
First, I am an expert and a specialist in American popular music. A lot of American popular music happened in the American South. I am very interested in geography and how music connects with cultural elements in both urban and rural areas in the South. I thought these would be wonderful places to have a living classroom for students to learn more about this music.
The second reason is that, while we will be studying historical music, there is also the current wave of music happening in all of the places. I wanted students to be able to study in places where there are important performances to see and music happening today, even if it’s not exactly in the same styles that we studied in the past. But more often than not, as we’ll see in the program, the styles of music performed in these places today are still often deeply connected to the pasts of these particular places. It is interesting to me that these are places with fertile music scenes and deep histories.
The third reason is I sense a lot of student interest in learning about music in these sorts of regional places and in cities where people might live after graduation. Moreover, understanding how music scenes work in these places is also transferable to lots of other places. Whether people want to work in the music industry or be involved in it as patrons and be able to live in a place that has a thriving music scene, they will witness much of this type of activity in the program.
These are only a few of the reasons why I think these are the best places to take our students.
What did you hope to accomplish with the program?
I want to be able to go to places where there is a rich performance scene. There are fewer of these than most people realize. Nashville and New Orleans are two of those rare places, where we will be able to see all kinds of live music and be able to study it by going to see concerts and experiencing music and all kinds of different contexts. To accomplish this, I had to choose the right location, because there are lots of cities where that would be difficult and there might only be music on weekends, for example.
I also really wanted to choose places where students could do creative work in local recording studios, preferably historic facilities where the famous recording was created. This is one of the things that we’re going to be doing, probably in both Memphis and Muscle Shoals. There are historic recording studios in Memphis, and Muscle Shoals in Nashville where we can work and session musicians still active in all of these locations. We can just pay the rates and go in and use the studios like professionals. In other words, these are historic places—because lots of famous music was recorded there—but they are also places where we can go and do some of our classwork.
And I wanted to go to places that have a strong sense of musical heritage because one of the courses is about heritage, and cultural tourism in music. To accomplish this, we need to have places that have a strong sense of tourism around music, even if it is modern music. Historic things like museums, archives, libraries, and exhibits are all features of this type of “cultural tourism.” I hope to be able to study how these places talk about their histories and understand their musical pasts.
What makes this program different from other study abroad programs?
It is a domestic trip, for one. This program is aimed at those who are interested in exploring regions of the United States for one reason or another. Carleton has always had a strong connection to American Studies and American music, so that’s one of the significant features of this for some students. Others may be international students, who are only in the U.S. for four years and want to soak up as much American culture as they can. In offering a domestic trip, I want to ensure that we have a broad range of study opportunities in the off-campus studies program, and that among those is a robust offering in American Studies.
This program also has an art practice component. Student projects will include developing original music and working to make recordings of this music, whether they’re doing it themselves or working with studio musicians. This practical art piece is a huge feature of the program!
What does a typical day look like in your program?
It will alternate. Some days will be days where we are reading, listening to recordings, maybe working in libraries or archives, and having conversations. There will be a lot of field trips. Some will be to museums, archives, private homes, and musical sites of interest, along with some studio work during the day. There will be many evening concert events. We might not necessarily have a normal nine-to-five schedule, but I will do my best to ensure that students have time to rest and explore many of these places on their own.
What are you most looking forward to?
I cannot wait to be able to stay for extended times in these places, make more contacts, and learn more about the business and entertainment scenes in these locations, mostly so that I can give it back to the Carleton students the more times I do the program. Having not stayed or lived in any of these places for that long, I am excited to be at the very beginning of the process of really feeling like a resident expert in some of these places. I know a lot about each of these locations, and I know a lot about the history and the facts, but living there is very different. I am most excited to spend a lot of time and feel like I’m soaking in local elements, especially in New Orleans and Nashville, which are two important places for modern music right now.
What advice would you give students to encourage them to study about during their Carleton career and what benefits do you see to the experience in general?
Carleton’s trimester system allows you to study abroad and not take away from as much of your time on campus as it would in a semester system. If you study abroad for an entire term, it is still only one-twelfth of your time at Carleton. I feel like Carleton’s schedule, for all of its warts that we complain about, is also really beneficial to be able to explore in this way and go to off-campus living classrooms. Even though I love Northfield, and is a wonderful place, it is not necessarily representative of all of what the world has to offer, or even what the United States has to offer. In the case of American music, it is very compelling to study this work in the places where it was created. It changes the way you hear the music. It is a lot different than reading about it in a book or listening purely on Spotify.
I think it is pretty important that students take the risk to join at least one off-campus study program. I also know from my time advising upperclassmen and speaking with alums that people will often cite study abroad among their most formative experiences as a Carleton student because you’re with a field expert. The trip has been planned for you very carefully, but the trip has also been planned in a way that lets you be an adult in some of these places for the first time. I think it is wise for students to have that experience at some point before graduating. Whether it’s through an internship off-campus studies or simply break-time exploration, it helps to guide students into a much better sense of what they might do when they are done with their Carleton experience.
