Academically and Performance Based Community Project
Dr. Carol A. Muller
Department of Music, University of Pennsylvania

Building a Living History of
Gospel Music in West Philedelphia

Why Gospel?

In class this semester in which we were dealing with the September 11th tragedy and American responses to it, an African American student commented that while everyone is talking about being a part of "the nation" she felt excluded from what that nation meant. The only places she felt a part of anything was in her family and in her church. This moment reinforced for me the central importance of a religious institutions in the Undited States, and perticularly amoung African americans, despite the deeply ingrained seperation of church/religion and state.

Philadelphia ha been a critical site in the development of African American religious history in this country, it being one of the first major urban centers for Freed Africans coming from the South. Much of the important performance and religious history was made in West Philadelphia.

I am seeking initial funding for a three-pronged project in West Phildadelphia.

1. Community Recuperation of Gospel Herirtage
2. Gospel Music with School Community - Penn-School Partnership
3. International Exchange: 1 and 2 participants engage with parallel commuties in South Africa.
   

Community Recuperation of Gospel Heritage

• This involves building a web-based archive on gospel music performances and history in West Philadelphia community from the mid-19th century through the present. West Philadelphia has churches on just about every block from marginal dependant churches to the more mainstream. Through a combination of graduate and undergraduate courses I would like to create a map of every church in the area, begin to create a history.

• These Projects can be run in Parallel with High School students conducting histories of their own churches, or at least churches in their immediate neighborhood, working alongside Penn undergrad and/or graduate students.
  
  
• The first class is just coming to a close. We are in the process of beginning an archive. So far we have the following small projects conducted by individual graduate students on. You can refer to the projects individually on the University of Pennsylvania Department of Music Projects page of this site.
  
  
• It is critical that we find a means for reciprocity in the communities that we conduct research. Besides the psychological advantages that doing oral history brings to a community, those we record typically ask for copies of our recordings. Our goal is tomake a limited edition of the CD Roms we make for the archive, available to the West Philadelphia Community.