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The Louisiana Gospel Tradition

Tim Muffitt is in his 15th season as Conductor and Music Director of the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra.
Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra
Tim Muffitt is in his 15th season as Conductor and Music Director of the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra.

This Friday the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra will take on Louisiana’s gospel music history for the very first time.

Tim Muffitt is in his 15th season as Conductor and Music Director of the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra.
Tim Muffitt is in his 15th season as Conductor and Music Director of the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra.

Orchestra Music Director Tim Muffitt said preparing for the Louisiana Gospel Tradition concert has been a rewarding - though often challenging - experience. The long over-due performance will bring together many musical components and feature performances by area groups such as the Florida Boulevard Baptist Church Choir, Shiloh Baptist Church Choir and the Baton Rouge Symphony Chorus.

Muffitt said the program will walk the audience through an evolution of gospel music. He said it will begin with some of the roots of gospel music with a performance by the local spiritual choir, Heritage.

"Spirituals are at the foundation of what is today known as gospel music," said Muffitt.

There will also be a representation of Shape-Note Singing, an early form of singing spiritual music that is known to be particularly powerful; a familiar gospel tune made popular by the movie "Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou", and a Southern Gospel quartet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xh7c6gZY4w

The event will showcase traditional, contemporary and praise gospel as well.

Muffitt said Louisiana's remarkable culture fabric is what has allowed off of these genres of gospel music to be right at his fingertips.

"And so when it’s time to do a program like this we can find extraordinary music-making in every different sub-genre of what we call gospel music," he said. "And we have great classical music in Louisiana as well and so when it’s time to put this all together, we can make it happen."

Muffitt said many paths lay ahead of gospel's future because all of the many styles are still vibrant today.

"It’s not as if they’ve all congealed into one thread," said Muffitt. "And what I have observed from my vantage point is that the gospel music is melding with contemporary, popular music styles more and more."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADGnIi9KrLQ

He said that kind of cross-pollination between styles of music and has been going on for decades, and he thinks we'll continue to see gospel music stay current with the trends.

The Louisiana Gospel Tradition is Friday, Oct. 11, at the Baton Rouge River Center Theater for the Performing Arts at 7:30 pm.

Copyright 2021 WRKF. To see more, visit WRKF.

Ashley Westerman is a producer who occasionally directs the show. Since joining the staff in June 2015, she has produced a variety of stories including a coal mine closing near her hometown, the 2016 Republican National Convention, and the Rohingya refugee crisis in southern Bangladesh. She is also an occasional reporter for Morning Edition, and NPR.org, where she has contributed reports on both domestic and international news.

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