MUSIC A spirtual mission

A professor hopes to keep spirituals alive with a media project.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
AUBURN, Ala. -- She is an evangelist, but not like preachers who make their living pounding pulpits.
Instead, Rosephanye Dunn Powell spends much of her spare time talking about -- and singing -- spirituals, which she believes have faded into the background.
From church sanctuaries to school auditoriums, Powell spreads a message that a loss of spirituals means a disconnection with black history.
"Most young people don't know about the spirituals of African-Americans," said Powell, in her third year as an associate professor of music at Auburn University.
"To some extent the fact that they don't know about them means they don't know history, which I think contributes to the waywardness of our youth."
She's doing her part to draw them back.
Powell is creating a multimedia project called "Spiritual Renaissance," which she hopes to finish this year or next. So far, she's developed a CD of music and dramatic presentations.
Spirituals are born in suffering, with their first roots in slavery. As blacks toiled in the fields in the American South, they sang to pass the time and sometimes to communicate secretly among themselves.
Unless a slave owner supplied them, musical instruments weren't plentiful, so the genre at first was sung mostly a cappela. Sometimes the singers incorporated hand-clapping.
Fisk Jubilee Singers
In the late 1800s, the Fisk Jubilee Singers of Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., were the first to take the medium outside the black culture. They performed spirituals across the country and in Europe.
After the civil rights movement of the 1960s -- the last major period in American history when spirituals flourished -- the genre drifted out of popularity. Today, the majority of people age 35 and under can't sing or recite a line from a spiritual.
Even many black churches, Powell has found, have gone the way of gospel, contemporary R & amp;B and Christian hip-hop to connect musically with worshippers.
Powell's "Spiritual Renaissance" includes an emotional exchange among slaves trying to escape onto Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad. "Just trust God and trust ol' Moses here," the actor portraying Tubman says. There's fear in the slaves' voices as the "massah" tracks their trail. Some panic and consider returning to slavery instead of heading north to freedom.
Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in 1819 or 1820 in Maryland and escaped. She helped her family, as well as several hundred other slaves, escape to Canada. Powell wrote her doctoral thesis on a Tubman contemporary, William Still, who was known as "the Philadelphia Stationmaster of the Underground Railroad."
On "Spiritual Renaissance," Powell specifically chose instruments such as guitar, drums and keyboards -- and singing styles including the blues -- in hopes of striking a chord with listeners.
One spiritual on the CD is "There's a Balm in Gilead," arranged as a jazz ballad.
What others say
One of Powell's students is Danielle Matthews, a 19-year-old sophomore in pre-dentistry who sings in the university choir that Powell and her husband direct.
"She does so much, not only teaching the songs but getting students to understand the history behind them," Matthews said. "She makes us go back and revisit the emotions of the slaves and put it into the music.
"You would never know just talking to her, everything she does."
A professor at Florida State University, Andre Thomas, is providing musical assistance and expertise on "Renaissance," but Powell's is the only Auburn voice.
"She is a wonderfully talented singer, teacher, and composer-arranger," said Thomas, the Owen F. Sellers Professor of Music at Florida State University.
"She is delightful," said Tom Wine, an associate professor at Wichita State University who worked with her in 2002 at a workshop with three of his school's choirs.
"She is so dynamic and really inspired the kids. She lit up the stage."
Response
Even the Powells' music pastor at their church has learned a few things from Powell and her husband.
"On both occasions of our hosting the AU gospel choir, under their direction, I have watched this congregation respond so positively to the rich heritage and appreciation that comes forth through song, story, dance and pageantry," said Tommy Conner of the Victory World Prayer Center in Auburn.
"It is a moving experience. Actually, I think I've gained a few new dance steps myself, because when they are ministering, you just can't be still."
Time ticks and Powell feels history slipping away. "All gospel music, before Marsalis, had let go of jazz," she said, referring to jazz great Wynton Marsalis. "The blues have held on. But I'm afraid we're about to lose a lot of heritage." An autographed photograph of singer Leontyne Price sits on the baby grand piano in her office.
Other items of note in the office include four busts, each about half a foot high, that represent what happens to your voice and upper body when you sing. Powell uses them to teach vocal pedagogy.
A soprano, she began studying spirituals seriously in the 1980s and has taken the research further.
In addition to spreading this musical gospel to her students, she has another motivation.
"It's part of a payback to those who have come before," she said.