Podcast: Exploring Black Music
The Center for Black Music Research presents a series of podcasts exploring concert, sacred, and all forms of popular musics in black music history from the sixteenth century to the present day. New episodes appear each month.
Users of Apple's iTunes software can click the left button below to subscribe; others should copy the link location from the right button and paste it into the appropriate field of their podcast-fetching program.
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Episode 14: Chicago Gospel: Innovators and Influence
September 22, 2009: This is the second installment of the two-part episode that features Chicago blues and gospel musicians. Included in this episode are gospel pioneers Thomas A. Dorsey, Roberta Martin, and the Thompson Community Singers (also known as the Tommies). A special highlight in this episode is Roberta Martin's piano performance on "God Is Still on the Throne."
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Episode 13: Chicago Blues: Innovators and Influence
August 18, 2009: This is the first of a two-part episode that features influential blues and gospel musicians from Chicago. Analytical comments on select songs and brief historical narratives aid our highlighting of three pivotal blues figures: Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Minnie, and Buddy Guy.
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Episode 12: The Mothership Connection
June 30, 2009: This episode is the final installment in a miniseries devoted to tropes in black music, with particular emphasis on the mothership and other extensions on tropes of transit such as the automobile and the river. The episode highlights songs by George Clinton, Erykah Badu, Sam Cooke, and others.
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Episode 11: Soul Trains
April 21, 2009: This episode is the second installment in a miniseries devoted to tropes in black music, with particular emphasis on the train and its realizations in soul music. The episode highlights songs by Gladys Knight, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, and others.
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Episode 10: Gospel Trains
March 17, 2009: This episode is an installment in a miniseries devoted to verbal tropes in black music, with particular emphasis on the train and its realizations in gospel music. This episode highlights songs by Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Golden Gate Quartet.
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Episode 9: Hip Hop Meets Jazz, featuring Dr. Emmett Price III
August 26, 2008: This episode explores the intersections between jazz and hip hop as realized by various hip hop artists of the past two decades. From vintage sound samples to lyrical evocations of jazz greats these intersections reveal intriguing parallels between the genres.
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Episode 8: Black Women Composers (Part Two)
July 15, 2008: This episode concludes a two-part series devoted to the works of black women composers. From concert settings to the expressive vocal pieces, the styles represented in this episode span the sounds of neo-romanticism to the soulful renderings of gospel, showing the versatility and craftsmanship of our featured composers. –Horace Maxile
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Episode 7: Black Women Composers (Part One)
May 21, 2008: This episode is the first of a two-part series devoted to the works of black women composers. From concert settings to the expressive vocal pieces, the styles represented in this episode span the sounds of neo-romanticism to the soulful renderings of gospel, showing the versatility and craftsmanship of our featured composers. –Horace Maxile
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Episode 6: Charles Mingus
March 23, 2008: This episode presents a brief biographical sketch of jazz composer/bassist Charles Mingus. Also highlighted are compositions featuring various stylistic influences from Duke Ellington to the church. –Horace Maxile
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Episode 5: Music for Strings
January 7, 2008: This episode features concerti and other works for string instruments by William Foster McDaniel, Frederick Tillis, Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and José White. –Donald James
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Episode 4: Rags and Ragtime
December 3, 2007: This episode features performances of Scott Joplin's music by Earl Hines and by the composer himself via player-piano rolls, and works by James Reese Europe and James Sylvester Scott as performed by the Black Music Repertory Ensemble. –Donald James
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Episode 3: The Art of the Jazz Ensemble Composer
November 5, 2007: The third episode explores the music of Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington, with attention to the interaction between composition and improvisation. This episode features performances by Ensemble Stop-Time and the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble. –Donald James
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Episode 2: Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson
October 1, 2007: The second episode is dedicated to the life and work of the composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932-2004), with excerpts of performances by the New Black Repertory Ensemble of Perkinson's Blues Forms (1972) and Sinfonietta No. 1 (1954-1955). –Donald James
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Episode 1: Soul Music of the 1960s
September 3, 2007: The first episode follows the growth of soul music in the 1960s, with performances by Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett (right), Otis Redding, James Brown, The Supremes, and Aretha Franklin. –Donald James
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The podcast is currently written and narrated by Horace Maxile. The first five episodes were written and narrated by Donald James, a researcher with the CBMR. The podcasts are produced by Andy Leach. |
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