UCR Department of Music
Wednesday@Noon via Zoom Presentation

Ambre Dromgoole 

Gospel Blues scholar, Yale Divinity School and Institute of Sacred Music 

“God Feeling”: On Black Girl Musicians and the Sanctified Church 

Hannah Snavely, coordinator 

When asked to reflect on her childhood accompanying Black pentecostal congregations in Detroit, legendary jazz musician and composer Alice Coltrane said “the people in the audience were so overcome by the spirit, they weren’t singing anymore; some were just walking around the church. Half of the choir had been carried out.” While remembered for the innovative ways her syncretic spirituality informed her compository voice, few scholars recognize the specific ways that her childhood experiences accompanying Black pentecostal congregations influenced her theomusicological development. This presentation chronicles the experiences and innovations of teenage Black girl musicians who, similar to Alice Coltrane, navigated early 20th-century Black pentecostal revival circuits. 
            
April 21, 2021
Wednesday, 12:00-12:50 P.M. PDT
Zoom
Free and open to the public.

Please register in advance for this event: 
https://ucr.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIkdeiprD8jHNwWKMhUTH2XG5wBGeVsMc4F
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining the presentation

Ambre Dromgoole (joint in African American Studies) holds a B.A. in Musical Studies and Religion from Oberlin College & Conservatory and an M.A. in Religion from Yale Divinity School and Institute of Sacred Music. Her Dissertation, “There’s a Heaven Somewhere: Itinerancy, Intimacy, and Performance in the Lives of Gospel Blues Women, 1915-1983,” positions the friendships, micro-interactions, and collaborations of an intimate circle of Black women gospel musicians (Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Roxie Ann Moore, Ernestine Washington, Marie Knight) as untilled sites worthy of critical Black feminist engagement, sociohistorical consideration, and nuanced religious analysis.

Information: 
performingarts@ucr.edu  music.ucr.edu

View the 2020-2021 Wednesday@ Noon series here