Abstract
This chapter explores how the 30-year experience (1987–present) of the Gospel Ensemble at Ohio Northern University illuminates an approach to one of the most pressing challenges for university educators in a diversified American society: facilitating the interaction of people with varied perspectives and backgrounds within the context of an academic community. Originally an all-African American organization, the Ensemble has become multicultural, maintaining the roots of a distinct musical tradition while experimenting with ethnic identities and culture formation within a supportive campus arts organization. The legacy of the Ensemble demonstrates the value of innovative use of music in a liberal arts education to prepare students for openness and adaptability, both in their careers and in their broader engagement with a complex diverse world.
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Notes
- 1.
Adriane L. Thompson-Bradshaw , “The Impact of Race on Perceptions of Authenticity in the Delivery and Reception of African American Gospel Music,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 2014), 8, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1395429657.
- 2.
Thompson-Bradshaw , “Impact of Race on Perceptions,” 9.
- 3.
Ibid., 13.
- 4.
Jerma A. Jackson, Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 134.
- 5.
Thompson-Bradshaw, “Impact of Race on Perceptions,” 41–42.
- 6.
Ibid., 41.
- 7.
Ibid., 9.
- 8.
Melva Wilson Costen , In Spirit and in Truth: The Music of African American Worship (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 76.
- 9.
Gerardo Marti , Worship Across the Racial Divide: Religious Music and the Multiracial Congregation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 53.
- 10.
T.V. Reed, The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 2.
- 11.
Reed, The Art of Protest, 13.
- 12.
Terrell Strayhorn , “Singing in a Foreign Land: An Exploratory Study of Gospel Choir Participation Among African American Undergraduates at a Predominantly White Institution,” Journal of College Student Development 52, no. 2 (2011): 137.
- 13.
Thompson -Bradshaw, “Impact of Race on Perceptions,” 44–45.
- 14.
Ibid., 15.
- 15.
Marti , Worship Across the Racial Divide, 55.
- 16.
Ibid., 53.
- 17.
Ibid., 52.
- 18.
Ibid., 62.
- 19.
Thompson -Bradshaw, “Impact of Race on Perceptions,” 46.
- 20.
Ibid., 48.
- 21.
E. Patrick Johnson , Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 180.
- 22.
Marti , Worship Across the Racial Divide, 3.
- 23.
Angela M. S. Nelson, “Why We Sing: The Role and Meaning of Gospel in African American Popular Culture,” in The Triumph of the Soul: Cultural and Psychological Aspects of African American Music, eds. Ferdinand Jones and Arthur C. Jones (Westport, CT: Greenwood/Praeger, 2001), 99.
- 24.
Nelson, “Why We Sing,” 104.
- 25.
Deborah Smith Pollard, When the Church Becomes Your Party (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), 24.
- 26.
Thompson-Bradshaw , “Impact of Race on Perceptions,” 52.
- 27.
Ibid., 101.
- 28.
Pollard, When the Church Becomes, 36.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Ibid.
- 32.
Angela W. K. McNeil , Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music. (New York: Routledge, 2005), 8.
- 33.
Thompson -Bradshaw, “Impact of Race on Perceptions,” 132.
- 34.
Pollard, When the Church Becomes, 33.
- 35.
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 2.
- 36.
Thompson-Bradshaw , “Impact of Race on Perceptions,” 51.
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
Obery M. Hendricks Jr., The Universe Bends Toward Justice: Radical Reflections on the Bible, the Church, and the Body Politic (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2011), 3.
- 39.
Thompson-Bradshaw , “Impact of Race on Perceptions,” 18.
- 40.
Pearl Williams-Jones, “Afro-American Gospel Music: A Crystallization of the Black Aesthetic,” Ethnomusicology 19 no. 3 (1975): 384.
- 41.
Thompson-Bradshaw , “Impact of Race on Perceptions,” 10.
- 42.
Ibid., 45.
- 43.
Ibid., 56.
- 44.
Ibid., 42.
- 45.
Ibid., 95.
- 46.
Pollard, When the Church Becomes, 35.
- 47.
D. Soyini Madison, Critical Ethnography: Methods, Ethics, and Performance (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2012), 170.
- 48.
Madison, Critical Ethnography, 186.
- 49.
Thompson-Bradshaw , “Impact of Race on Perceptions,” 45.
- 50.
Ibid.
- 51.
Heather Davey, e-mail message to Thompson-Bradshaw , October 23, 2016.
- 52.
Ibid.
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Thompson-Bradshaw, A., Cullen, M. (2018). Gospel Music: Cultural Artifact or Cross-Cultural Opportunity?. In: Hensel, N. (eds) Exploring, Experiencing, and Envisioning Integration in US Arts Education. The Arts in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71051-8_13
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