Musical Practices in Black Churches of Philadelphia and New York, ca. 1800-1844

1977 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 296-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen Southern



This book offers new conceptual vocabularies for understanding how cultures have trespassed across geography and social space. From the transformations of the meanings and practices of charity during late antiquity and the transit of medical knowledge between early modern China and Europe, to the fusion of Irish and African dance forms in early nineteenth-century New York, the book follows a wide array of cultural practices through the lens of motion, translation, itinerancy, and exchange, extending the insights of transnational and translocal history. The book challenges the premise of fixed, stable cultural systems by showing that cultural practices have always been moving, crossing borders and locations with often surprising effect. The chapters offer striking examples from early to modern times of intrusion, translation, resistance, and adaptation. These are histories where nothing—dance rhythms, alchemical formulas, musical practices, feminist aspirations, sewing machines, streamlined metals, or labor networks—remains stationary.



2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (sup2) ◽  
pp. S227-S242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick A. Wilson ◽  
Natalie M. Wittlin ◽  
Miguel Muñoz-Laboy ◽  
Richard Parker


2000 ◽  
pp. 218-223
Author(s):  
CHARLES B. RAY


Author(s):  
Mark Burford

Gospel music was integral to the culture of many black churches, but gospel singing offered pleasures to its practitioners and fans that extended beyond musical worship. In the late 1940s, Jackson’s career was interwoven with two phenomena that nudged black gospel singing toward the realm of popular culture: the “song battle” and the high-profile programs of religious music presented at Harlem’s Golden Gate Auditorium by promoter Johnny Myers. Pitting Jackson against such rivals as Roberta Martin and Ernestine Washington, the battle of song offered gospel singers alternate forms of prestige and extended to gospel audiences opportunities for active and engaged participation. Myers made instrumental use of the song battle format, deploying a roster of local talent and national stars and connections with New York–based independent record labels. It was through this Myers “syndicate” that Jackson was introduced to Apollo Records, launching her career as a recording artist.



Author(s):  
Ray Allen

Jump Up! Caribbean Carnival Music in New York City is the first comprehensive history of Trinidadian calypso and steelband music in the diaspora. Carnival, transplanted from Trinidad to Harlem in the 1930s and to Brooklyn in the late 1960s, provides the cultural context for the study. Blending urban studies, oral history, archival research, and ethnography, Jump Up! examines how members of New York’s diverse Anglophile-Caribbean communities forged transnational identities through the self-conscious embrace, transformation, and hybridization of select Carnival music styles and performances. The work fills a significant void in our understanding of how Caribbean Carnival music—specifically calypso, soca (soul/calypso), and steelband—evolved in the second half of the twentieth century as it flowed between its island homeland and its burgeoning New York migrant community. Jump Up! addresses the issues of music, migration, and identity head on, exploring for the first time the complex cycling of musical practices and the back-and-forth movement of singers, musicians, arrangers, producers, and cultural entrepreneurs between New York’s diasporic communities and the Caribbean.



AJS Review ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 398-403
Author(s):  
Judah M. Cohen

Jewish music study is a loosely unified field that brings together strands from several scholarly traditions. Researchers trained in historical musicology typically use document study, note analysis, and contemporary aesthetic writings to examine how questions of “Jewishness” manifest themselves in the works of selected composers. Ethnomusicologists frequently utilize ethnographic fieldwork methods developed for studying musical practices of Jewish communities within a broad cultural and symbolic system. Jewish music researchers in Israel commonly focus on comparative cultural projects intended to illuminate stylistic or song-based pathways of transmission from one age or culture to the next. Cultural theorists tend to situate music as a medium for negotiating the borders between Jews and other groups. And with the lay public in mind, specialists and nonspecialists alike have generated numerous popular textbooks claiming to cover “Jewish music.” Each of these disciplines asks different questions about the nature of sound within Jewish contexts; yet central to all is the question of how the sound itself reflects concepts of Jewish life—providing researchers with a richly evocative common ground for substantive and interdisciplinary study.



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