Concert Spirituals and the Black Soprano

St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University
Wednesday, April 22, 2015


Marti Newland, soprano, Core Lecturer for Music Humanities
Magdalena Stern-Baczewska, piano, Director of the Music Performance Program
Paul T. Kwami, organ, Associate Professor of Music, Fisk University, Mike Curb Jubilee Singers Endowed Chair and
Musical Director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers®
Whitney Slaten, soprano saxophone, Ph.D. Candidate, Ethnomusicology
Kevin Fellezs, moderator, Assistant Professor of Music and African American Studies
Farah Griffin, respondent, William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature

…


With Columbia's Music Performance Program, "Concert Spirituals and the Black Soprano" enacted a reconsideration of the role of singing concert spirituals among black sopranos in relation to political resistance, musical virtuosity, gender and the sacred. The particularity of performing this body of art songs merges the experiences of enslaved Africans in the United States with the expressive and political moves of western classical arrangers and musicians. While performed in many forms, the performances and recordings of black sopranos’ concert spiritual singing signifies the labor of the feminine and the role of the black sacred experience in the enduring legacy of concert spirituals. The event opened with a performance of selected concert spiritual repertoire popularized among twentieth century black sopranos, immediately followed by a panel discussion in conjunction with the Columbia College Core Curriculum course Music Humanities.

The event was supposed by the Columbia University Department of Music, the Office of the Core Curriculum, the Institute for Research in African American Studies, the Center for Ethnomusicology, and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.