A MUSICAL STORY FROM THE SHINE ON UNIVERSE
DELTA
RISING
Come for the biscuits.
Stay for the gravy.
When tech billionaires target Yazoo City, Mississippi, for AI data center expansion, the only thing standing in their way is a legendary 200-year-old blues hall—and Big Rosie, the community’s matriarch: a woman who will feed a stranger, but you best not get on her bad side.
From the creator of Shine On, winner of Best Teen Feature Screenplay and Best Musical Feature Screenplay.
FEATURED ORIGINAL SONG
Southern Comfort
A blues, gospel and Southern hip-hop invitation into the world of Delta Rising—where the porch light stays on, the table always has room and strangers can become family.
Come on in.
Don’t matter where you came from.
Don’t matter what road brought you here.
Down here, if the porch light’s on… you already home.
THE HEART OF THE STORY
Some places are worth standing up for.
At the centre of Delta Rising is Black Cat Hall, a legendary blues venue with two centuries of music, hardship, faith, resilience and joy living in its walls and worn floorboards.
When enormous technological wealth threatens the hall and the community surrounding it, Big Rosie refuses to move quietly aside. The fight to save Black Cat Hall becomes a fight for the people, the music and the values that give the Mississippi Delta its soul.
The story brings the young found family of the Shine On Universe south, where hip-hop meets the blues and a new generation discovers that progress means very little when it erases the roots beneath it.
Big Rosie
A formidable Southern matriarch armed with love, determination and the best biscuits and gravy this side of the Mississippi.
Silas
An enigmatic elder with a cane, a watchful eye on Black Cat Hall and a history no one fully understands—until the past and present collide.
Black Cat Hall
A 200-year-old blues hall that carries the memory of generations—and becomes the line a community refuses to surrender.
Blues Meets Now
Thirteen original songs bring blues, gospel, country, R&B and hip-hop into one cinematic musical world.
A SOUTHERN STORY WITH A UNIVERSAL HEART
The blues is not a museum piece. It is a living foundation.
Delta Rising honours the Deep South as a place of music, community and enduring cultural power—a place audiences should want to visit, understand and experience for themselves.
THE MUSIC INSIDE DELTA RISING
Thirteen original songs. One musical journey home.
Delta Rising is the story of a community fighting to preserve the people, places, traditions and music that make it precious. It is also a musical celebration of the blues—the foundation from which generations of American music grew.
This short-form Song Bible reveals how the blues is woven throughout the screenplay and deliberately blended with gospel, hip-hop, country, soul, pop and rockabilly. Every song has a dramatic purpose: revealing character, deepening emotion, connecting generations and moving the story forward.
All songs are original works written by Ronald Strauss.
The Delta is rising.
And if you ever feel lost,
let the Delta call you home.
Invitation
Southern Pearls, Hallelujah Blues, Dust, Grit and Glory and Delta Dreams introduce the Delta as a living character, welcome outsiders into the circle and turn restoration into shared purpose.
Roots & Calling
Let the Delta Call You Home becomes the story’s recurring summons, while Cotton Hands makes ancestral work, family history and the land itself impossible to overlook.
Generations in Conversation
Sweet Tea Honey, Neon and Rhinestones, What You Should Know and Echoes of the Soul let blues speak with pop, country, rockabilly and rap—not as a novelty, but as musical lineage.
Loss & Service
Fire, Ashes and Amen gives the community room to grieve. Southern Comfort answers with food, faith, open doors and a town choosing to care for one another.
Testimony
Delta Rising gathers every central voice into a blues-gospel finale where private change becomes public courage and a rebuilt hall becomes a living promise.
Southern Pearls
Delta blues • GospelIntroduces the Mississippi Delta as a living presence shaped by grit, grace, faith and memory.
Hallelujah Blues
Front-porch Delta bluesWelcomes the outsiders by showing how blues grows from pain, observation, humour and room for every voice.
Dust, Grit and Glory
Work-song bluesTransforms the restoration of Black Cat Hall into a shared act of labour, pride and belonging.
Delta Dreams
Gospel-blues balladBrings Act One home through food, mercy and music, revealing that belonging can begin before anyone feels ready.
Let the Delta Call You Home
Cinematic blues • GospelThe musical engine of the screenplay—a call that travels outward, gathers people and leads them back to the Hall.
Cotton Hands
Roots bluesTurns ancestral labour into something physical and connects a new generation to the hardship beneath inherited beauty.
Sweet Tea Honey
MJ-inspired pop • Delta stompPays off a young leader’s growth with a high-energy tribute to Michael Jackson—precision, showmanship and pure pop spectacle joining the rhythm of the Delta.
Fire, Ashes and Amen
Delta funeral bluesLets grief remain honest and unpolished before the story earns its movement toward rebuilding.
Southern Comfort
Gospel • Soul • Blues • Hip-hopShows the real miracle: churches, schools, farms and kitchens opening their doors and feeding more than stomachs.
Neon and Rhinestones
Elvis tribute • Rockabilly • BluesA direct tribute to Elvis Presley. The King knew his roots, and he knew the blues that powered his sound.
What You Should Know
Country blues • Piano balladA country-blues ballad that reveals the deep musical connection between country and blues through an intimate moment of truth.
Echoes of the Soul
Slide-guitar blues • RapMakes the lineage between blues and rap audible, teaching that speed alone is not truth—listening is.
Delta Rising
Blues • Gospel finaleBrings the full company together as individual testimony becomes one communal voice inside the rebuilt Hall.
For approved stakeholders:
Private project materials are available by request.