A founding member of The Blind Boys of Alabama, one of the world’s most successful gospel groups, Clarence Fountain has lived a remarkable life, full of music and passion. Now in his eighties, slowed by age and diabetes, Clarence retains his brash charm, and wistfully recalls his decades of glory, from beginnings in the choir of a school for the blind, to the group’s sudden rise to stardom as “Oedipus” in the experimental musical The Gospel at Colonus.

An African-American musical version of Sophocles's tragedy, Oedipus at Colonus. In 1985 PBS televised the original Brooklyn Academy of Music production, as presented by the American Music Theater Festival at the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia, as part of the Great Performances series.

The Bonnaroo Music Festival first turned up on the radar of the mainstream press and music industry when it posted some remarkable numbers in the spring of 2002. Folks in the know wondered how could a first-time event in rural Tennessee sell out all 70,000 of its tickets in a matter of days, with no advertising except email and word of mouth. And why would anyone, with the riots of Woodstock '99 a not-too-distant memory, even attempt such an event. The answer is that Bonnaroo, staged on a green expanse of Tennessee farmland June 21-23 2002, is the apotheosis of a movement that has quietly gained momentum for over a decade, existing as a parallel music universe.