Book Talk on "So You Want to Sing Spirituals" by Randye Jones, Burling Library

Event Information

Title: Book Talk on So You Want to Sing Spirituals by Randye Jones
Time: 4:15 p.m.
Date: Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2019
Place: Burling First Floor Lounge

Soprano and music historian Randye Jones will present a talk on her newly published book, So You Want to Sing Spirituals.

During the book talk, Jones will focus on the question of whether non-Black students should study and perform spirituals. The presentation will spend some time on historical concerns, on points to consider when deciding whether to study spirituals and on some thoughts about using dialect in performance. While conducting research for the book, Jones drew from resources at the libraries of Grinnell College, which encouraged enhancement of their score, recordings, and book collections in the area of concert spiritual performance. The author plans to share a bibliography of materials available in the libraries as well as to display some of these materials for the talk. The book talk is sponsored by the Grinnell College Libraries and American Studies

The book talk commemorates the 400th anniversary of the arrival of bound Africans to the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia--an event that would introduce enslavement of Africans and their descendants to what would become the United States.

The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Speaker Biography

Randye Jones holds her Bachelor of Arts degree in Music Education from Bennett College, Greensboro, North Carolina, and her Master's degree in Vocal Performance from The Florida State University, Tallahassee, with additional study in vocal literature at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Jones has gained recognition for her research of and published writings on African American vocalists and composers and as a performer and lecturer through her projects, The Art of the Negro Spiritual, Afrocentric Voices in "Classical" Music, and the online publication, The Spirituals Database. Her first book, So You Want to Sing Spirituals, was released in October 2019. Jones currently serves as the media collections coordinator for the libraries at Grinnell College.