If the closest you’ve come to experiencing the Delta Blues is through the White Stripes, the coming week will bring original masters like Robert “Wolfman” Belfour and Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, and those influenced by them, straight to Brooklyn.

The bluesmen and women are here via the Mississippi Delta Heritage Project, an ambitious program by a 20-year-old institution in Fort Greene called 651 ARTS that brings the culture, music, and performing arts of the African Diaspora to this hood every year. The Mississippi Delta was ripe for the picking, says Marketing Director Rebecca Sheahan, because of the renewed interest in this corner of the country post-Katrina.

What that means for us is a crash course in music like fife and drum — a trippy, loose riff on Civil War marching music — helmed by Sharde Thomas, a woman who began playing at 5, and at 14, picked up the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band left by her grandfather, the late great Otha Turner, who Alan Lomax recorded back in the 50s. She opens for the powerhouse rhythm and blues woman Toshi Reagon and her band BIGLovely this Sunday, June 1, at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, a fantastic venue for a force like Toshi, who barely has to lift a pinky to deliver a drop-dead show.

Lucky for us — and four of you — we have two pairs of tickets for the 5th and 10th person, respectively, who can tell us where Sharde Thomas was born. UPDATE: we have two winners, who found the answer at blog.651arts.org.

Also on the bill are bluesmen like T-Model Ford, who didn’t learn the guitar till he was in his 70s! On June 3 he plays the still fabulous but often forgotten Frank’s Lounge, an old-school, intimate venue that comes close to the experience of a bona fide juke joint, where you can hear Ford wax about his storied career, from lumber yard to jail to record deal.

Cassandra Wilson closes the series on June 7, but there are many less famous musicians worth getting to know this coming week. Start on the 651 site, where you can hear audio clips from all of them: 651arts.org.

Photo of Toshi Reagon by JOMOTO/ Molly Rubin and Tony DiPietro. Photo of T-Model Ford by David Raccuglia.