Music Program, American and Indigenous Studies Program, and Media and Difference Project, Gospel Choir, Bard Ethnomusicology Present
Marti Newland & Artis Wodehouse
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Bard Hall
"Concert Spirituals, Black Sopranos and the Politics of Racial Inequality"
Through a recital and post-performance discussion, Concert Spirituals, Black Sopranos and the Politics of Racial Inequality enacts a reconsideration of the role of singing concert spirituals among black sopranos in relation to political resistance, musical virtuosity, sexuality and the sacred. Concert spirituals merge 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 black sacred experiences in the enduring legacy of the repertoire. Drawing on her fieldwork with the contemporary Fisk Jubilee Singers, the choral ensemble that concertized and popularized spirituals in the late nineteenth century, and the careers of professional black operatic sopranos, Newland foregrounds the particularity of performing this body of art songs in the current climate of racial inequality in the United States.
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Location: Bard Hall