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Books > Music > Other types of music
(Accordion). 24 Christmas favorites arranged specifically for
accordion: Away in a Manger * The First Noel * Go, Tell It on the
Mountain * Good King Wenceslas * It Came Upon the Midnight Clear *
Jingle Bells * Jolly Old St. Nicholas * March of the Toys * Silent
Night * Toyland * We You a Merry Christmas * and more.
In the late 1920s, Reverend A. W. Nix (1880-1949), an African
American Baptist minister born in Texas, made fifty-four commercial
recordings of his sermons on phonographs in Chicago. On these
recordings, Nix presented vocal traditions and styles long
associated with the southern, rural Black church as he preached
about self-help, racial uplift, thrift, and Christian values. As
southerners like Nix fled into cities in the North to escape the
rampant racism in the South, they contested whether or not African
American vocal styles of singing and preaching that had emerged
during the slavery era were appropriate for uplifting the race.
Specific vocal characteristics, like those on Nix's recordings,
were linked to the image of the "Old Negro" by many African
American leaders who favored adopting Europeanized vocal
characteristics and musical repertoires into African American
churches in order to uplift the modern "New Negro" citizen. Through
interviews with family members, musical analyses of the sounds on
Nix's recordings, and examination of historical documents and
relevant scholarship, Terri Brinegar argues that the development of
the phonograph in the 1920s afforded preachers like Nix the
opportunity to present traditional Black vocal styles of the
southern Black church as modern Black voices. These vocal styles
also influenced musical styles. The "moaning voice" used by Nix and
other ministers was a direct connection to the "blues moan"
employed by many blues singers including Blind Willie, Blind Lemon,
and Ma Rainey. Both Reverend A. W. Nix and his brother, W. M. Nix,
were an influence on the "Father of Gospel Music," Thomas A.
Dorsey. The success of Nix's recorded sermons demonstrates the
enduring values African Americans placed on traditional vocal
practices.
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