Local artists the Ozark Highballers and Pura Coco are performing a free concert at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, April 29, at the Juke Joint in the Pryor Center located on Fayetteville's downtown square. 

The Ozark Highballers are a string band that formed in Fayetteville specializing in old time traditions from the 1920s and 1930s. Alternative R&B singer Pura Coco was born in New York City and raised in the South. As an artist, she is known for blending her background steeped in Latin culture with her Southern upbringing. Together, the performances highlight the living traditions—old and new—thriving in Northwest Arkansas today. 

The concert is a local tie-in previewing Ozarks: Faces and Facets of a Region, a featured program at this summer's Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C. This concert showcases two musical styles and cultures from Northwest Arkansas that will be celebrated this summer on the National Mall. 

Watch the Ozark Highballers perform "Down the River" from their 2019 release Going Down to 'Leven Point.

Watch Pura Coco's music video for "LadyBug" from her 2019 EP Leaves.

This event was created in partnership with the American Musicological Society's Many Musics of America project, the Music Education Initiative, the U of A Department of Music, the Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

For more information, contact Christa Bentley at the U of A Department of Music, cb129@uark.edu.