YOUNG, GIFTED, AND BLACK GOSPEL CHOIR
Barry Jones , director
The Young, Gifted, and Black Gospel Choir (YGB) has a truly
proud 21 year history of struggle and success, but we have always
gained strength from the "joyful noise" which we share with
each other, and the rest of the community. This has been true
from the very beginning when, in 1967, six black first-year
students came together in the basement of Younker Hall on campus
at Grinnell College to share a common and powerful experience:
gospel music.
The foundations which these students laid were not formalized
until 1973. At that time, YGB's founding members, Milton Rolland
and Gwendolyn Moore, requested that our first Director, Cecil
Lytle, who was an associate professor of Music at Grinnell,
help them increase both YGB's size and level of excellence.
Prof. Lytle was able to accomplish these goals with great success.
The choir was organized around three basic principles. As Prof.
Lytle wrote, these were:
- cultural uniformity as a result of the Black Church experience
- a strong desire to continue that same cultural heritage
while pursuing higher education at Grinnell College
- the choir's expressed desire to act as an active agent
in raising money for the Martin Luther King Scholarship
Fund at Grinnell College.
The name of the choir was taken from a work entitled To Be
Young, Gifted, and Black by the famous black writer Lorraine
Hansberry. With this strong foundation, the choir grew to 48
members. Practicing 6-8 hours a week, the choir was able, in
1974, to record a record entitled Young, Gifted, and Black:
In Concert. They performed around Iowa, often accompanied by
Spaces, which was Grinnell's jazz-rock ensemble.
Since this auspicious beginning, YGB has gone through many
transformations. YGB has performed in a number of cities including:
Des Moines, Waterloo, Marshalltown, Iowa City, Kansas City,
Chicago, Madison, Memphis, New Orleans, Los Angeles, New York,
and Washington D.C.
We have had our share of trials, however. In 1981, the number
of people in the choir dwindled to seven. These seven members
had the same passionate love for gospel music that the first
six students felt as they sang in the basement of Younker Hall
in 1967. Today, YGB has once again grown and includes over 30
members.
As is to be expected, YGB has changed significantly in 21
years. We no longer have the bond of "cultural uniformity."
Instead, we use our diversity as a bond. Our choir has members
from different cultures, nationalities, and races. We feel these
differences only make us stronger. In one of our programs from
years past is this quote from W.E.B. DuBois The Souls of Black
Folks, "...sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their
souls, and not by their skins." In YGB, we strive to create
such a place, while continuing a tradition we inherited from
YGB's original members: the celebration of Black American culture
through Gospel Music.
--Written with love by Ronald Edgell '96
