2016: Dr. Guthrie Ramsey, Scholar in Residence

The Baylor School of Music, the Pruit Memorial Symposium, and the Baylor University Libraries are pleased to welcome Dr. Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., as scholar-in-residence on September 26-27, 2016. You and the members of your congregation are invited to two inspiring programs featuring Dr. Ramsey. Each event is free and open to the public.

At 6 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 26, Ramsey will speak at Greater Ebenezer Baptist Church, located at 919 Dutton Avenue across I-35 from the Baylor campus. His address, “Y'all Like That?: Contemporary Gospel Music and the Sacred-Secular Divide,” will feature musical demonstrations that include three gospel singers, one from Baylor University and two from Waco-area churches.

Professor Robert Darden, author of a two-volume series on black sacred music, Nothing But Love in God's Water, will also discuss the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project and announce the 2017 Pruit Symposium. A reception will follow in the Cox Reception Hall at Armstrong Browning Library on the Baylor campus.

At 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 27, Ramsey will present “Hide/Melt/Ghosts: Writing the Early History of African American Music Culture” at Meadows Recital Hall located in the McCrary Music Building. The lecture explores how gospel music consistently pushed boundaries and borders to become the creative hothouse from which flowed important elements defining black popular music of the twentieth century.