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SNEAP Year 2 Presentation: Second Baptist Male Chorus and Angelic Voices

PerformerPerformed by Second Baptist Male Chorus American, 1976 - 2014

PerformerPerformed by Angelic Voices American

Date2000 June 24

Mediumreformatted digital file from VHS tape

DimensionsDuration: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes, 30 Seconds

ClassificationsGraphics

Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections

DescriptionVHS tape recording of a required public presentation of the Year 2 Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program team in African American traditional hymns and spirituals. The teaching artists were the Second Baptist Male Chorus and the apprentices were Angelic Voices. Their required public presentation took place at a Big 7 Gospel groups concert on June 24, 2000 at Mt. Calvary Church in Hartford, Connecticut.

Object number2015.196.804a-b

CopyrightIn Copyright

NotesSubject Note: The Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program is a CCHAP initiative since 1997 that fosters the sharing of community-based traditional (folk) artistic skills through the apprenticeship learning model of regular, intensive, one-on-one teaching by a skilled mentor artist to a student/apprentice. The program pairs master artists from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, or Connecticut with apprentices from one of the other states, as a way to knit together members of the same community or group across state lines. Teaching and learning traditional arts help to sustain cultural expressions that are central to a community, while also strengthening festivals, arts activities, and events when master/apprentice artists perform or demonstrate results of their cooperative learning to public audiences. The Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program at the Connecticut Historical Society manages the program in collaboration with the Folk Arts Program at the Massachusetts Cultural Council and independent folklorist Winifred Lambrecht who has a deep knowledge of the folk arts landscape of Rhode Island. Primary funding for the program comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, with support also from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Institute for Community Research, and the Connecticut Historical Society.

Biographical Note: The Big Seven was a network of male choruses from seven Greater Hartford-area churches. They sang a variety of gospel styles, from quartet to choir, performing in a different church every other month. The individual choruses also took part in Sunday services in their home churches. Many of the men moved to Connecticut from the South, and they retained knowledge of older songs and quartet harmonies. The Second Baptist Male Chorus from the New Britain church of the same name sang together for over two decades. On two Sundays each month the six members of this group would sing during their church's services. They helped to raise money for the church, towards buying speakers and microphones and donating to the church building fund. As part of the "Big Seven" social and spiritual network of church choruses the group traveled every other month to one of the other churches throughout Connecticut to share the gospel in song with these community congregations. The men of the Second Baptist Male Chorus, all of whom moved up north with their families when they were young, sang both hymns and old-style spirituals in a "quartet gospel" style. Singing for this group was not about performance. They sang to praise the Lord, they sang from a natural strong faith, they sang together as a way to remember common bonds. Deacon Joseph Hudson, the founder, sang baritone along with Brother Leon Peavly; Deacon Willie Howard sang tenor; Deacon Phillip Bryant provided the bass; and Deacon Eddie Clements sang lead tenor. The Second Baptist Male Chorus was featured as part of CCHAP’s music project “Sounds Like Home: Connecticut Traditional Musicians” and they performed as part of CCHAP’s music series presented at the Charter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford in 1997-1998. In Year 2 of the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, Paula Sanders and Wilma Hayes, also known as Angelic Voices who were active in studying and performing gospel music as a ministry in Newport, Rhode Island, learned old-style hymns and songs, such as “Ain’t that Good News” from the Second Baptist Male Chorus of New Britain, who traveled to Hartford to work with Angelic Voices.

Additional materials exist in the CCHAP archive for these artists and these events.

Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.

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