Back in 2010, a crew of professional documentary filmmakers visited the Digitization Projects Group. They were on a mission: to interview and film the team of professionals working on the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project (BGMRP), a project brought to life through the vision of Baylor University journalism professor Robert Darden. David Licata and his…
Category: Black Gospel Music Preservation Program
Getting to Know the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project (BGMRP)
One of our bigger projects here at the Digitization Projects Group is the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project (BGMRP). Established in 2008, it seeks to preserve America’s proud tradition of black gospel music through digitization, access, and new research. From the earliest days of the project, we established a blog for interested parties to track…
Frances G. Spencer Collection of American Popular Sheet Music & Black Gospel Music Restoration Project: A Comparison
Amanda Harlan presented at the Music Library Association Annual Meeting, Wednesday, March 24th. She did a comparison of the metadata workflow between two major digital music collections at Baylor University: the Frances G. Spencer Collection of American Popular Sheet Music and the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project. She wanted to show the similarities and differences…
New Interviews
Please see http://www.baylor.edu/lib/gospel for some interviews of Robert Darden and Bob Marovich about the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project.
Robert Darden featured in documentary
Our own Robert Darden is part of the following documentary. Please click to view the video. Looking for Rare Gospel Vinyl
Update on Copyright and the Collection
As a result of the preservation work of the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, these recordings are presented here free for personal, non-commercial use as a contribution to education and scholarship. Baylor University does not own the rights in this collection and therefore cannot grant or deny permission to distribute material in this collection. It…
Ashley Cleveland Supports The Black Gospel Music Project
Ashley Cleveland Performs at Baylor University We thank Ashley and her husband, Kenny Greenberg, for their support of our project.
New Endowment Created
A new endowment for Baylor University, the Lev H. Prichard III Traditional Black Music Restoration Endowed Fund, was created recently. For more information see http://www.baylor.edu/pr/news.php?action=story&story=63770. We are grateful to the Prichard family for their generous support of the Baylor Libraries.
Preserving America’s Black Gospel Heritage
On February 19th, 2009, Bob Marovich, Amanda Harlan, and Tony Tadey represented Baylor University’s Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at the Music Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago. Bob Marovich (gospel historian) presented on gospel music in Chicago during the Golden Age of Gospel (1940s-1970s) and how the project at Baylor University is so important from…
Engineer’s Update for 6-19-2008
We are well into lot 34, a lot which contains 50 7-inch discs. Most of the collection seems to be of 45s from the Chicago area and the greater mid-west. So far, for me some of the highlights include recordings by the Wind City Four and The Flying Clouds. Please stay tuned for further updates.
Access to the Sound Files
The question we receive the most from people interested in this project is related to information on how they can listen to or obtain copies of these recordings. Unfortunately, the material we are collecting was produced between 1940 and 1970, and all of this material is most likely protected by copyright. We have made some…
The First Engineer’s Update on the BGMRP (3/20/2008)
Hello, I finished up the Preservation transfer of our lot 27 this morning. Lot 27 contains 52 items, mostly LPs. One of the highlights of the Lot is an item which is signed by 4 members of the Staple Singers. We plan to finish up scanning this collection next week. Up next is Lot 28,…