To Do This, You Must Know How: Music Pedagogy in the Black Gospel Quartet Tradition

by Lynn Abbot, Doug Seroff

Overview

A landmark study tracing the current of music education that gave form and style to the black gospel quartet tradition

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617036767
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	02/01/2013
Series:	American Made Music Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	24 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Lynn Abbott works for the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University. With Doug Seroff, he has also co-written Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889-1895 and Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, "Coon Songs," and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz, both published by the University Press of Mississippi.


Doug Seroff is an independent scholar living in Greenbrier, Tennessee. With Lynn Abbott, he has also co-written Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889-1895 and Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, "Coon Songs," and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz, both published by the University Press of Mississippi.

Editorial Reviews

"To Do This, You Must Know How is essential reading for the serious student as well as the armchair enthusiast of African American sacred music. Abbott and Seroff's unquestionable street-level command of the subject, and their passion for the music, make the book a pleasure to explore and a significant contribution to American music scholarship. FIVE OF FIVE STARS."

—Bob Marovich, Journal of Gospel Music

"To Do This, You Must Know How tells the history of the black gospel quartet by examining the story of the great gospel trainers—musicians who taught the singers of the quartets repertory and style. Its primary sources are the black newspapers of the time, and a wide series of interviews conducted by the authors, some going back as far as the late 1970s; an extremely valuable resource brought up from underground by this publication. What a pleasure it is to see how Abbott and Seroff handle the many quotations from interviews—they come as though from the interviewers' mouths. Also in evidence is the author's encyclopedic knowledge of the recorded repertory of these quartets, gained from listening as well as from discographies. To these sources the authors bring a great love for the bedrock American music which illuminates their entire narrative. To Do This, You Must Know How will speak page by page to those who are moved by music from this great tradition."

—Wayne D. Shirley, emeritus senior music specialist, Library of Congress

From the Publisher