Students at UBUNTU Festival 2014 in New York City
In this class, incoming freshmen are taken beyond the classroom and into their new city of Philadelphia, and in the case of the 2014 class, her New York City neighbor, for live musical performances that speak to the old and new African diasporas. An essential aspect of this seminar is to provide students with the opportunity to engage with not only African diasporas, but also the city of Philadelphia through music. In 2014, students conducted fieldwork as part of an ABCS (Academically Based Community Service) project working with Millennium Baptist Church in West Philadelphia, helping to add to this digital archive of the church created by students in the 2012 Freshman Seminar on Gospel Music.
Click here to go to the WordPress created by the 2012 Gospel Seminar students
Click here to go to 2014 Seminar’s work at Millennium’s Gospel Conference and here for more on the students’ experience as part of an ABCS project
In this seminar, students are encouraged to listen closely to music of all kinds, and to develop a musical vocabulary for doing so. Specifically, students reflect on the relationship between African music, past and present as it occurs in the city of Philadelphia, and gain experience writing about these reflections and what they hear, how they interpret what they hear, what they learn about the complex layering of African experience in the United States.
