Music Maker Foundation has been one of the leading nonprofits in the music industry for 30 years. What makes this organization special, though, is how its team members seek out Southern songs to save, while also working to protect and empower those who make the music in the first place. The mission is as much about the people as their art. With Song Keepers: A Music Maker Foundation Anthology, the nonprofit honors the people, places, and songs (re)discovered over the past three decades. This album is a vital tome of history and traditions.What shocks me the most every time I listen to these songs is simply how real they are. Some are standards and some are originals. The playing is honest, occasionally even makeshift. And the stories are pointedly American, yet wholly universal. Song Keepers encapsulates everything I love and believe in about music--that this art form is a human form. And celebrating that humanity shows how we're more alike than different. --Hilary Saunders (Managing Editor, No Depression)