Celebrating Aretha Franklin

The passing of legendary artist Aretha Franklin has elicited an outpouring of praise from around the world, including in both mainstream and music-centered journalism outlets. Everyone from Rolling Stone to Pitchfork, the Detroit Free Press and Waco’s own Tribune-Herald have paid tribute to the “Queen of Soul” since her death from pancreatic cancer last week…

Visions of Rapture 2018: The Online Exhibit

The third annual Visions of Rapture exhibit celebrates the music from Baylor’s Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, specifically the 45 rpm discs that were released without cover art during their original pressings. Working with students in Prof. Andrew Baker’s ART 3333 course on Type and Design, the project showcases their visions of what cover art…

Evangeline’s Windy City Pilgrimage

Sometimes a project comes together after a long, thought-out process. Sometimes it’s serendipity – something you couldn’t plan for just happens and the right things come together. Sometimes it spins organically out of an existing situation, a related set of materials nestled together under a broader umbrella. And sometimes, it’s all of those things ……

Friday Extra: Why Scream When You Can Shout!

If this first full week of October has been stressful, tiring or just plain exhausting, take heart! A new series of 2-minute segments called Shout! Black Gospel Music Moments has begun airing on Waco’s local NPR affiliate, KWBU-FM. Hosted by Robert Darden, they will feature stories from the Golden Age of Gospel (1945-1975) and will…

The Scene at the Crossroads: A Peek at Baylor’s Presence in the NMAAHC

Friends of the blog have long known – since 2013, to be exact – that material from our Black Gospel Music Restoration Project would become part of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). And now, as the museum is set to open its doors on September 24, 2016, we…

Color Our Collections 2016!

We’re excited to be taking part in Color Our Collections 2016! The event start at the New York Academy of Medicine and this year tons of new institutions are joining in the fun by taking items from their collections, reformatting them as coloring pages, and encouraging users to upload their creations to social media using…

Perfect Delight: The Inaugural Voices & Vinyl Concert!

After months of planning and hours of rehearsal by our friends in the Heavenly Voices Gospel Choir, our Voices & Vinyl concert was held on Thursday, December 3rd in the Moody Memorial Library Allbritton foyer. It was, to be perfectly frank, a complete success from our point of view. A sizable crowd of students, faculty,…

The Spencer Collection Marches On With 400+ New Titles!

Unlike some of our never-ending projects (ahem, Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, ahem), there are some projects that we’re making slow, steady progress on every day. And that’s why we’re announcing a new batch of items in the Frances G. Spencer Collection of American Popular Sheet Music – 461 all told! The items span a…