R. Nathaniel Dett: THE CHARIOT JUBILEE (lyrics and links)

R. Nathaniel Dett made his mark in the last century as a pianist, composer, and choral director. His complete piano works have been recently recorded and his oratorio, THE ORDERING OF MOSES was performed at Carnegie Hall in 2014. For these, and for his major contributions to the back choral tradition through his long association with Hampton Institute in Virginia, I thought it might be useful to give him some exposure during Black History Month. I have previously posted his biographical timeline online and have updated it to correspond to the timeline included in this document as Appendix One. I have transcribed the lyrics to THE CHARIOT JUBILEE here. https://www.academia.edu/22527580/R._Nathaniel_Dett_THE_CHARIOT_JUBILEE_lyrics_ The following are YouTube links to works referred to in the paper. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” by The Fisk Jubilee Quartet, 1909 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUvBGZnL9rE "Juba: Dance" from the suite IN THE BOTTOMS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq834hTosEw Oratorio, THE ORDERING OF MOSES https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y3nKJt6FHg “Listen to the Lambs” by the Nathaniel Dett Chorale https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhjJo3zsixk "Chariot Jubilee" from the album SAINT LOUIS BLUES: CLASSICAL MUSIC IN THE JAZZ AGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTGmL7eZaCc&ebc=ANyPxKpnTQuYnEv7QTVC0JlT1hXzkGv7kGLqrQujEtboI587WvdkXDOfs1tPZRgexw7kNT2vccegUxRVI7I07yAiE3_rzCqhgQ For a video of the second half performed by the Nathaniel Dett Chorale, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmwviQIRhyw

The Gospel in Song — Insights and Applications from the Life and Hymns of Paul Gerhardt, with emphasis on the nature of chorales and their modern equivalents, such as the hymns by Stephen Starke. Presented at the WELS Conference on Worship and the Arts at Gustavus Adolphus College in 2008.

IJASS, 2021

Spirituals and gospel songs have a capacity to instill courage and bring people together. Spirituals helped enslaved Americans of the antebellum American South persevere through unimaginable hardships and look optimistically to a future of freedom. Similarly, gospel songs have inspired strength and Christian harmony for centuries. This essay briefly explores the roles spirituals and gospel songs played at the end of the American Civil War and in the postwar endeavors of The Fisk Jubilee Singers and Moody-Sankey revivalists. The essay also includes analysis of Albert Brumley's popular twentieth-century gospel song "I'll Fly Away," its relationship to spirituals, and its positive reception by African American performers. There are two intended purposes: to indicate how spirituals and gospel songs provide creative insights into specific historical moments and to show how their verses transcend those moments to express broader messages of unity, hope, and deliverance.

The Hymn, 2010

2018

2013

What Christians sing as they worship is a focus of considerable attention in the contemporary church and yet it has been a contentious issue at almost every period of Christian history. Since the mid-twentieth century, significant social, cultural, and technological changes, all against a backdrop of increasing global consciousness, have affected the way music functions and the ways opinions about repertoire and performance practices are formed. The primary focus of this project is the analysis of eight songs composed between 1983 and 2001. The essential question is how musical analysis contributes to a greater understanding of the nature of contemporary congregational song and various performance practices. This project will focus on analysis of harmonic structures as the major element. This will provide a framework from which comparisons of other musical elements can lead to a greater awareness of the issues of music and worship, and of music and theology. Developing a greater und...

2016

How mass evangelism and the Jubilee choral tradition inaugurated a revolution in gospel music across ecclesiastical and racial lines. Solicited article, awaiting publication.

2019

Religions, 2023

“Performing” and “performance” are potentially contentious words within the context of contemporary Christian worship. However, performative elements are explicit in the lyrics of contemporary congregational songs (CCS), and in video recordings of CCS, through the actions of those on stage and in the congregation, as well as in the broader context of staging, lighting, projection, production, and video editing. However, to date, there is only a handful of scholarly works that explore performing in contemporary worship or contemporary worship as performance and most of them are ethnomusicological. This paper seeks to address notions of performing and performance through a broader lens of the most-sung CCS globally, examined through the disciplinary fields of performance studies, musicology, media studies and theology. It involves a two-fold complementary textual analysis of the most-sung CCS lyrics and the most-watched ‘live worship’ videos of those songs on YouTube. In so doing, this study identifies how the Christian music industry at large officially portrays and languages performance in worship songs and also identifies how performative elements are enacted in the live worship videos released. These analyses are finally synthesized to identify how performing and performance are understood and actively portrayed to and by the contemporary church.