Sing a New Song

• Published in: Chicago history Vol. 41; no. 1; pp. 24 - 39
• Main Author: Marovich, Robert M
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago Chicago History Museum 01.01.2017
• Subjects: African Americans; Baptist churches; Choirs; Classical music; Gospel music; Johnson, James Weldon (1871-1938); Music festivals; Musical performances; Phillips, Wendell (1811-1884); Religious music; Sunday, William Ashley (1862-1935); United States > US; Chicago Illinois
• ISSN: 0272-8540

Starting as a porter, he rose steadily, becoming a supervisor in 1934, an assistant superintendent in 1948, and eventually superintendent of Chicago's Hyde Park station, the first African American to serve as a post office branch superintendent.5 Jones's musical fortunes forever changed in late 1920 when the Reverend Dr. William Decatur Cook invited him to oversee the music program for his new church.6 Cook was an influential leader in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) denomination,7 from which he split in opposition to what he considered less than populist practices.[...]while conscious of their music history, many members of the African American middle class, and those aspiring to that status, cultivat- ed a taste for Western European classical music.According to music scholar David N. Lewis, the recording was made at the studio of pioneering music evangelist Homer Rodeheaver at 218 South Wabash Avenue.23 Identified on the label as "Prof. J. Wesley Jones and Community Choristers," the choir sang Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's "Lift Up Your Heads," a staple of their repertory, with much gusto and accompanied by piano.[...]READING | For a related work on the historical significance of song and how music enabled the civil rights movement, see Robert Darden, Nothing but Love in God's Water: Black Sacred Music from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, vol. 1 (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014).