By: Kristin Kite
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (UATV) – The University of Arkansas Department of Music hosted its 10th annual Black Music Symposium which dedicated to educating and exploring the music contributions of Black Americans.
This year’s theme, “Lest our Feet Stray,” invoked a spirit of remembrance of Black musical genres. The theme’s name borrows words from the full poem written by James Weldon Johnson titled “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
Jeffrey Allen Murdock, who is the University of Arkansas’s director of choral activities, an associate professor of music and conductor of the university’s Inspirational Chorale is the creator of the Black Music Symposium.
“When I saw Doctor Murdock conduct and teach, I decided whatever it is that he’s doing, I’m going to do what he does,” Jeffrey Kerst, Music Education Major said.
The history of Black Americans unravels through lectures and concerts from various professors and performing artists.
“One of the things that I have really enjoyed is how students have been exposed to opportunities they don’t get elsewhere,” Murdock said.
Kerst praised Murdock’s teaching methods to truly reach the whole audience. Kerst said he has learned a lot from Murdock, and he has been opened up to a whole world of opportunities he believes he would not have gotten anywhere else. Murdock hand picks his Inspirational Chorale students, and Kerst was one of them.
“Every song that I’ve learned teaches me a little more about what it’s like,” Kerst said, “and what it’s has been like in the past to be black in America.”
Murdock started the Black Music Symposium to expand that reach he has in the classroom to instead reach all races, genders and ethnicities.
“It’s important that people understand that black culture and all of these musical genres are inexplicably linked,” Murdock said.
The Black Music Symposium occurs annually in February in honor of Black History Month.
The University of Arkansas is now the home of the Arkansas Center for Black Music, as well as the only Master of Music in Black Sacred Music degree in the United States. Both the center and the new degree’s creation are being led by Grammy Award-winning educator Jeffrey Allen Murdock.