Charles M. Townsend, PhD

The Religious Studies Speaker Series Presents:

Vaughn A. Booker, Ph.D.

3:00PM-4:30PM, Wednesday, March 11. Register here to attend via Zoom.

“Black Sacred Jazz Histories”

Description: What is the social, cultural, and political authority of Black churches for the people whom these institutions shaped, but who chose to pursue their own lives outside of these institutional walls, without making the leap to other religious traditions? What is authority for those who don’t formally identify with Black churches? Jazz is an artistic profession where Black musicians in the era of Jim Crow and within the dominant culture of what was then referred to as the “Negro church”—now “the Black church”—viewed themselves as representatives of their race. Several musicians also crafted expressions of religion through their artistry. This talk will showcase how some prominent jazz artists, including Duke Ellington and Mary Lou Williams, agreed with, or diverged from, the social and theological norms of Black Protestant church culture through their sacred music, which also reflected their conceptions of African American sacred history.

Vaughn A. Booker is the George E. Doty, Jr. and Lee Spelman Doty Presidential Associate Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is a specialist in African American religious history. His scholarship has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Stanford University Humanities Center, the Young Scholars in American Religion Program, and the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship. Booker is a co-editor of the North American Religions book series at NYU Press with Dr. Samira Mehta and Dr. Anthony Petro. His first book, Lift Every Voice and Swing: Black Musicians and Religious Culture in the Jazz Century (NYU Press, 2020), won the Council of Graduate Schools’ 2022 Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities and was a finalist for the American Academy of Religion’s 2021 Religion and the Arts Book Award. Booker is co-editing Africana Religions in America and the Challenges of History with Dr. Judith Weisenfeld, Dr. Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh, and Dr. Ahmad Greene-Hayes. His next book is a history of irreverent religious and spiritual orientations in African American life from Emancipation to the present. 

The Religious Studies Speaker Series is made possible by a grant from Oakton’s Educational Foundation.