So You Want to Sing Spirituals

So You Want to Sing Spirituals
Author: Randye Jones
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2019-10-14
Genre: Music
ISBN: 153810735X

With their rich and complicated history, spirituals hold a special place in the American musical tradition. This soul-stirring musical form is irresistible to singers seeking to diversify their performance repertoire, but it is also riddled with controversy, especially for singers of non-African descent. Singer and historian Randye Jones welcomes singers of all backgrounds into the style while she explores its folk song roots and transformation into choral and solo vocal concert repertoire. Profiling key composers and pioneers of the genre, Jones also discusses the use of dialect and other controversial performance considerations. Contributed chapters address elements of collaborative piano, studio teaching, choral arrangement, voice science, and vocal health as they apply to the performance of spirituals. The So You Want to Sing series is produced in partnership with the National Association of Teachers of Singing. Like all books in the series, So You Want to Sing Spirituals features online supplemental material on the NATS website.

Gospel Music: An African American Art Form

Gospel Music: An African American Art Form
Author: Dr. Joan Rucker-Hillsman
Publisher: FriesenPress
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2014-12-30
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1460232216

This book is designed for the general reader of gospel music, as well as those who incorporate gospel into their lesson plans on the academic level. “Gospel Music: An African American Art Form” provides music information on the heritage of gospel from its African roots, Negro spirituals, traditional and contemporary gospel music trends. The mission and purpose of this book is to provide a framework of study of gospel music, which is in the mainstream of other music genres. There are 8 detailed sections, appendices and resources on gospel music which include African Roots and Characteristics and history, Negro Spirituals, Black Congregational Singing, Gospel history and Movement, Gripping effects: Cross Over Artists, Youth in Gospel, and Gospel Music in the Academic Curriculum with lesson plans. There is a wealth of knowledge on the cultural heritage of “Gospel Music As An Art Form.”

Spirituals

Spirituals
Author: Kathleen A. Abromeit
Publisher: A-R Editions, Inc.
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2015-01-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0895797992

Spirituals originated among enslaved Africans in America during the colonial era. They resonate throughout African American history from that time to the civil rights movement, from the cotton fields to the concert stage, and influenced everything from gospel music to blues and rap. They have offered solace in times of suffering, served as clandestine signals on the Underground Railroad, and been a source of celebration and religious inspiration. Spirituals are born from the womb of African American experience, yet they transcend national, disciplinary, and linguistic boundaries as they connect music, theology, literature and poetry, history, society, and education. In doing so, they reach every aspect of human experience. To make sense of the immense impact spirituals have made on music, culture, and society, this bibliography cites writings from a multidisciplinary perspective. This annotated bibliography documents articles, books, and dissertations published since 1902. Of those, 150 are books; 80 are chapters within books; 615 are journal articles, and 150 are dissertations, along with a selection of highly significant items published before 1920. The most recent publications included date from early 2014. Disciplines researched include music, literature and poetry, American history, religion, and African American Studies. Items included in the annotated bibliography are limited to English-language sources that were published in the United States and focus on African American spirituals in the United States, but there are a few select citations that focus on spirituals outside of the United States. Of the one thousand annotations, they are divided, roughly evenly, between: general studies and geographical studies; information about early spirituals; use of spirituals in art music, church music, and popular music; composers who based music on spirituals; performers of spirituals (ensembles and individuals); Bible, theology, and religious education; literature and poetry; pedagogical considerations, including the teaching of spirituals as well as prominent educators; reference works and a list of resources that were unavailable for review but are potentially useful. This book also offers considerable depth on particular topics such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers and William Grant Still with over thirty citations devoted to each. At the same time, materials included are quite diverse, with topics such as spirituals in Zora Neale Hurston’s novels; bible studies based on spirituals; enriching the teaching of geography through spirituals; Marian Anderson’s historic concert at the Lincoln Memorial; spiritual roots of rap; teaching dialect to singers; expressing African American religion in spirituals; Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s music; slave tradition of singing among the Gullah. The book contains indices by author, subject, and spiritual title. Additionally, an appendix of spirituals by biblical reference, listing both spiritual title to scriptural reference as well as scripture to spiritual title is included. T. L. Collins, Christian educator, compiled the appendix.

Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry

Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry
Author: Sandra Jean Graham
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2018-02-26
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0252050304

Spirituals performed by jubilee troupes became a sensation in post-Civil War America. First brought to the stage by choral ensembles like the Fisk Jubilee Singers, spirituals anchored a wide range of late nineteenth-century entertainments, including minstrelsy, variety, and plays by both black and white companies. In the first book-length treatment of postbellum spirituals in theatrical entertainments, Sandra Jean Graham mines a trove of resources to chart the spiritual's journey from the private lives of slaves to the concert stage. Graham navigates the conflicting agendas of those who, in adapting spirituals for their own ends, sold conceptions of racial identity to their patrons. In so doing they lay the foundation for a black entertainment industry whose artistic, financial, and cultural practices extended into the twentieth century. A companion website contains jubilee troupe personnel, recordings, and profiles of 85 jubilee groups. Please go to: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/graham/spirituals/

Musicking

Musicking
Author: Christopher Small
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0819572241

Extending the inquiry of his early groundbreaking books, Christopher Small strikes at the heart of traditional studies of Western music by asserting that music is not a thing, but rather an activity. In this new book, Small outlines a theory of what he terms "musicking," a verb that encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening to a Walkman to singing in the shower. Using Gregory Bateson's philosophy of mind and a Geertzian thick description of a typical concert in a typical symphony hall, Small demonstrates how musicking forms a ritual through which all the participants explore and celebrate the relationships that constitute their social identity. This engaging and deftly written trip through the concert hall will have readers rethinking every aspect of their musical worlds.

Choral Music by African American Composers

Choral Music by African American Composers
Author:
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1996
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780810830370

Lists and describes both published and unpublished choral works by some 100 Afro-American composers and arrangers, encompassing works representing all styles from four-part settings to avant-garde pieces. The bulk of the book is an annotated list of compositions in tabular form, organized alphabetically by composer's name, listing publication dates and number of pages, vocal ranges, type of accompaniment, publishers, and catalog number. Includes a listing of collections, biographical sketches, a discography, and addresses of publishers and composers. Useful for conductors and researchers. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Slave Songs of the United States

Slave Songs of the United States
Author: William Francis Allen
Publisher: Applewood Books
Total Pages: 170
Release: 1996
Genre: African Americans
ISBN: 1557094349

Originally published in 1867, this book is a collection of songs of African-American slaves. A few of the songs were written after the emancipation, but all were inspired by slavery. The wild, sad strains tell, as the sufferers themselves could, of crushed hopes, keen sorrow, and a dull, daily misery, which covered them as hopelessly as the fog from the rice swamps. On the other hand, the words breathe a trusting faith in the life after, to which their eyes seem constantly turned.

What Makes That Black?

What Makes That Black?
Author: Luana
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2016
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1483454797

We all can name some of the Africanist aesthetic-structures that fuel African American and American art ... Syncopation, Improvisation, Call and Response, Cool, Polyrhythm, or Innovation as an ambition- But there are many, many more. What Makes That Black? The African-American Aesthetic identifies and defines seventy-four elements of the aesthetic through text and illustration. Using the magnificent camerawork of R.J. Muna, Sharen Bradford, Jae Man Joo, Rachel Neville, James Barry Knox, and more- as they point their cameras at Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, and jazz artists such as Cécile McLorin Salvant and Wynton Marsalis- a specific artistic consciousness or sensibility visually unfolds. Luana even joins the camera crew as she shoots Oakland Street Graffiti.

Choral Arrangements of the African-American Spirituals

Choral Arrangements of the African-American Spirituals
Author: Patricia J. Trice
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 254
Release: 1998-02-12
Genre: Music
ISBN: 031306492X

Although the choral arrangements of the African-American spirituals constitute the largest group of folk song arrangements in western literature, they have received little scholarly attention. This book provides the needed historical and stylistic information about the spirituals and the arrangements. It traces the history and cultural roots of the genre through its inception and delineates the African and European characteristics common to the original folk songs and arrangements. Ensembles that have perpetuated the growth of the spiritual arrangements—from Fisk Jubilee Singers of the 1870s through those currently active—are chronicled as well. Musicians, choral directors, and scholars will welcome this first complete text on the African-American spiritual genre. Annotated listings of titles provide information choral directors need to make ensemble-appropriate performance choices. Arrangements indexed by title, arranger, and subject complement the accompanying biographies and repertoire information. Well-organized and thoroughly researched, this text is a valuable addition to music, choral, multicultural, and African-American libraries.