5th Annual Midwest Black History Month Conference
My Soul Looks Back: Music and Memory in the Black Experience
Commemorating the legacy of Mahalia Jackson
February 29, 2008
Conference Description
My Soul Looks Back: Music and Memory in the Black Experience explores the challenges and dilemmas associated with remembering the past. For black history, these challenges are especially profound in light of the proclivities of individuals and nations to selectively re-interpret aspects of the past that are contested, violent or troubled.
Through the process of analyzing our inherited memories, the conference also wants to explore how black music has served historically both as a dynamic tradition and a cultural marker for those who struggle with how to interpret America’s racial past.
Music evokes memories. For example, gospel music’s history as sacred expression reflects the struggle for recognition and relevance that marks America’s racial legacy. In this context, the conference wants to explore art forms and scholarly works such as bio- historical texts, memoirs, and personal narratives that reveal contested views of history and heritage.
The conference seeks theoretical papers, literary analyses, historical interpretations, and musical renditions focused on long-standing themes in the intellectual and artistic lives of black communities. These themes include empowerment, resistance to race and gender oppression and maintaining a heritage that both defines black culture and shapes American experience.
The conference sessions will be held at Luther College on Friday, February 29, 2008 with an Opening Plenary at 9:15 a.m. and a closing Plenary at 3:45 p.m.
Conference Location
Luther College is a Phi Beta Kappa institution of approximately 2,500 students. One of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges, Luther is built on the rolling wooded hills and limestone bluffs of northeast Iowa. The scenic Upper Iowa River flows through the lower portion of the 175-acre central campus.
Conference Speakers
This year, Dr. Timothy Tyson, Professor of African-American Studies at Duke University and author of Radio Free Dixie and Blood Done Sign My Name, will speak about historiography and America’s racial past. Ms. Mary Williams, a premier gospel singer in the tradition of Mahalia Jackson will perform and discuss her ministry and the traditions of gospel music.
Conference Exhibit
The conference will also feature an art exhibit by Richard Thomas, a black Jazz and heritage artist who was displaced from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and has resettled here in Iowa. In the spirit of hope and redemption, his limited edition art prints capture the essence of black heritage in the 1960s and today.
Conference Rationale
Black people throughout the diaspora possess common memories of racial injustice. Although specific incidents of racial hatred may be shrouded in historical myth, deliberately lost or completed distorted, individuals and groups remember and commemorate this tragic past because they know intrinsically that the past has fundamentally impacted their present lives. The triumphs and tragedies of America’s racial history is reproduced, transmitted, and interpreted through language, art, and music. The many forms of narrative and musical rendition that explore our common inherited memory of race is the subject of this conference
As a college of the ELCA, Luther College is especially interested in religious experiences as transmitters of cultural heritage and memories of the past. Therefore, the conference seeks scholarship that illuminates the connection between religious music and the reproduction of community. In this context, the conference wants to explore how gospel music taps the emotional wellspring and unconscious memory of a people’s suffering. Gospel music has its roots in slavery and the harsh racial realities that blacks transformed into faith and resistance. The artistic power of gospel music is a powerful tool to transmit and interpret black cultural experiences. It has been used by black people throughout many generations to interpret, inspire, and console.
My Soul Looks Back: Music and Memory in the Black Experience encourages us to appreciate the diversity of ideas that has shaped American history. The conference provides a forum to explore the complexities and nuances of black life in America through a variety of cultural expressions including interpretations of personal experience, explorations of collective memory, and musical performance. Through these means the conference strives to explore the troubled aspects of the American past as a gateway to reclaiming our heritage and strengthening our democracy.
Legacy Honoree
This year’s conference honors the music, memory and legacy of Mahalia Jackson. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1911, Mahalia Jackson is widely recognized as a giant in gospel music. She is also credited with catapulting gospel music into American mainstream culture. She began singing at the Plymouth Rock Baptist church at the age of four. In 1927, at the age of 16, she moved to Chicago and began singing as a soloist at churches throughout the south side of the city. While larger black churches often shunned gospel music, Mahalia’s fame spread beyond her home church choir at the Greater Salem Baptist Church. In 1937, she began her recording career as an artist for Decca Records. From 1946-1954, she recorded for Apollo and moved to Columbia Records in 1954 where she continued to record until l967. From the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott to Dr. King’s Death in 1968, Mahalia was very prominent in the Civil Rights Movement. In later years, she toured extensively in Europe and the United States. Mahalia Jackson died in 1972 from complications related to heart failure and diabetes.
Ms. Jackson’s music captures the black tradition of vibrant vocals, soulful rhythms and emotional performance that communicates the hopes, dreams and despairs of the ordinary black people of her generation. The musical context out of which Mahalia created her own voice includes blues, spirituals, country, zydeco and other vernacular forms (roots music) but as sacred music, faith and freedom are key themes.
Criteria for selection of conference papers
The conference Committee will review all abstracts and select proposals that meet one or more of the following criteria. Papers and/or performances selected for presentation will:
- Explore significant narratives about race and its meaning in American life.
- Explore or perform genres of African-American music, particularly gospel music.
- Explore the life and work of Mahalia Jackson
- Emphasize perspectives that engage theory and research methods related to collective memory and the black disaspora.
This conference welcomes the work of younger scholars and artists. Please e-mail a recent Curriculum Vitae and a one-page abstract of no more than 250 words on the proposed paper or performance to Sheila Radford-Hill, Executive Director of the Luther Diversity Center at radfsh01@luther.edu or Martin Klammer, Chair/Africana Studies Department at klammer@luther.edu. The committee needs to receive all submissions by November 30, 2007. For more information call (563) 387-1014 or visit our website at www.luther.edu/student-life/diversity/.
Send abstracts and vitae by US Mail to:
Sheila Radford-Hill, Ph.D.
Luther College
Dahl Centennial Union
700 College Drive
Decorah, IA 52101.