Sunday, April 8, 2001
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Sunday, April 8, 2001 |
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Concert celebrates 200 years of black church music By CAROLYN CARY
"Where Did It All Come From" was the name of a workshop and concert presented at Flat Rock African Methodist Episcopal Church. The walls reverberated with the sounds of drums, pianos and voices covering 200 years of music in the black church. A workshop was open during the day to the public with those participating tracing the history of black music. The workshop choir that evening consisted of various denominations singing songs with narration by visiting minister, the Rev. Michael W. Baldwin. He is pastor at the Christians For Change Church in Riverdale. Workshop coordinator and vocalist Carrietta Belle Butts is a native of Tuscaloosa Alabama and was reared in Milwaukee. She was a voice student at the Hartford Conservatory in Connecticut under the direction of Professor Chai-Lun Yueh and is now studying under the direction of Professor Marlysa Brooks at the Georgia State School of Music. One of the pianists, James Darren Fryar, is a musician at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Newark, N. J. He studied at the Newark School of the Performing Arts, where he continued studies in piano and organ. Butts wrote in the program that while the composers of the spirituals of the early and mid-19th century are unknown, those spirituals became the gospel music of the turn of the 20th century. Many African-American spirituals found their way into many of our hymnals, including: "Go Tell It On The Mountain", "Were You There?", "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands" and "Lord, I Want To Be A Christian." Other guest musicians include Selima Harleston, a freshman at Spelman College where she is studying music with a focus on vocal performance and concentration in composition and theory, and Rico Harris of Jonesboro, who has been playing drums for 20 years. Flat Rock youth minister of music Kim Richardson also played piano and Leslie Dempsey, who sang in the workshop choir as well as in the trio, is the church minister of music.
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