Amanda Bumgarner

The December 2020 issue of Choral Journal is online and features an article titled “R. Nathaniel Dett’s The Chariot Jubilee: An Instrument for Fostering Racial Harmony” by Jason Max Ferdinand. You can read it in its entirety online at acda.org/choraljournal. Following is the introduction. You can read the full article in the December 2020 issue.
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The progress of people of African heritage in classical music offers an intricate portrait that has not always been clearly visible. However, their contribution can be readily seen in Negro spirituals, jazz, gospel, and other American popular styles. Jazz rhythms and blues intervals infuse concert music of Ives, Gershwin, and Copland in America; Ravel, Milhaud, and Dvořák abroad; and many more recent composers from both sides of the Atlantic. Yet, many music history books offer an inadequate account of the many significant contributions to Classical music composition from persons of African descent such as Robert Nathaniel Dett.

Over the last century and a half, however, it has been demonstrated that both classical music and Black music have become diverse and nuanced. This article seeks to position Robert Nathaniel Dett’s The Chariot Jubilee for SATB, solo, orchestra, and organ as an instrument for fostering racial harmony during a time in American history in which it is much needed.

View this full article (and more!) in the December 2020 issue of Choral Journal, available online at acda.org.

The latest issue of Choral Journal is online and features an article titled “The Whitfield Sound: Unearthing Foundational Elements of Contemporary Gospel Music” by Brandon Waddles. You can read it in its entirety online at acda.org/choraljournal. Following is a portion from the introduction

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Toward the latter half of the twentieth century there was a focal shift in the gospel music scene. The city of Detroit, a major transportation hub during the Great Migration along with Chicago, the birthplace of Black gospel music, produced a new crop of gospel musicians with fresh ideas. Rev. Charles Craig, Rev. James Cleveland, Rev. Charles Nicks, and Dr. Mattie Moss Clark were chief among those who helped to create the sophisticated sound of gospel music that Detroit became known for, compared to the more visceral utterings of Chicago’s home-grown traditional style.

Thomas Whitfield (1954-1992), a Detroit native, was born and reared during the height of this new era of classic gospel music. What he heard and experienced inside and outside of the church inspired him to foster a style of gospel music that would permeate the scene and redefine the genre in myriad ways, including harmony, compositional structure, and textual significance. The sound Whitfield forged in the last two decades of his life is the predominant aural aesthetic of contemporary gospel music.

The defining features of the Whitfield Sound are as follows:
1) the redefining of the choral sound in gospel music;
2) the blending of gospel, jazz, and classicism;
3) the creation of orchestral textures in gospel music; and
4) the deepening of intimacy in gospel song lyrics.

From a musical standpoint, sophistication and elegance lies at the foundation of Whitfield’s writing. From a spiritual standpoint, the message within him music was unadulterated in its intent and presentation. The Whitfield Sound is the sonic bridge between the gospel music of past and present.

View this full article (and more!) in the December 2020 issue of Choral Journal, available online at acda.org