Billy Stevens demonstrates the impact of Negro spirituals on American popular music with a fascinating journey spanning a century of American history. Using archival recordings of two songs based on the biblical story of Samson and Delilah, “My Soul is a Witness,” and “If I Had My Way,” Stevens describes how spiritual songs contributed to American popular music while transforming African American culture into the mainstream. In the process, audiences are introduced to some of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century: black preachers and congregations, jubilee singers, itinerant bluesmen, folk musicians of the 1960s, and rock bands of the 1980s. Their shared vocabulary of religious symbolism, along with their message of freedom and equality, creates a common bond spanning genres and generations.

In this 45-minute lecture, Billy Stevens demonstrates how historic interactions between African-Americans and European-Americans shaped the evolution of American popular music. With its roots in slavery and the fusion of musical traditions brought from both Africa and Europe, American music is a natural outgrowth of the unique culture of the American South. From rap stars to rock 'n' rollers, gospel shouters to big band crooners, from Elvis Presley to Stephen Foster, a pattern of contact and conflict between white and black cultures fueled the creation of confluent musical forms recognized worldwide as distinctly American. Using musical instruments as well as rare recordings, Billy helps audiences understand the relationship between jazz and blues, ragtime and gospel, and how the first distinctly American musical genre, blackface minstrelsy, has influenced country musicians up to the present day. The result is a better understanding of how our music reflects America's social fabric, affirming the contributions of performers both famous and forgotten while empowering minority communities often relegated to obscurity.

The story of the discovery and rise to fame of this teenager from Tupelo parallels the musical interaction between black and white communities defining American popular music from the early 1800's to the present day. Through background information on his youth, along with the important contribution of renegade Memphians such as Dewey and Sam Phillips, the social and historic context of Elvis' remarkable success is put into proper perspective. Examples of his earliest recording, contrasted with the versions sung by the original artists, makes clear the way in which Elvis transformed earlier genres, both African and Anglo-American, into a new style acceptable to young white audiences of the 1950's. As a symbol of the ultimate failure of a social system designed to prevent close interracial contact, Elvis's music is a potent example of the deep debt America owes to black/white dialogue and cultural exchange. The result is a new understanding of Elvis' fabled success, illustrating perfectly the pattern of cultural confluence upon which our popular music is based.

Requirements for Program: lectern (Mr. Stevens brings his own sound system.)