Workshops to explore African-American vocal tradition

Garland Nelson ?96 made his name in music during his Skidmore years, as an outstanding vocalist and the music director of the college?s gospel group Quiet Storm, and he still makes a lot of music around town with his popular five-plus-piece band, Soul Session.

This month, Nelson and company are delivering a series of six interactive musical workshops around Saratoga Springs, under the title ?Shout It Out! The Evolution of the Black Vocal Tradition.? Free and open to the public, the workshops explore the way African-American musical forms generated and turbocharged American music, from spirituals to jazz and the blues, pop, hip-hop, and Broadway, with special attention to its roots in West African slave music. Guest artists Brian Melick, a master percussionist, and composer/pianist Elizabeth Woodbury Kasit help carry the program from the plantation songs of the antebellum South through Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and into the present.

The goal is to get people involved, says Nelson, who was a government major at Skidmore. ?You won?t just sit down and sing Kumbaya?we?ll hand out percussion instruments, engage people in the call-and-response experience, and get everyone up and moving.? To bring to life the historical background that gave rise to the music, Nelson uses audiovisual materials and contextual details such as how 19th-century West Africans, seized from tribes that spoke different languages and shackled together in the holds of slave ships, embraced music as the one universal language open to them. Adds Nelson, ?We can all agree that the human spirit will always find a way to express itself.?

Sponsored by the Saratoga County Program for Arts Funding and the Saratoga Springs Visitor Center and Heritage Area, the Shout It Out workshop series began Jan. 22 and continues with sessions from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Feb. 10 at the Factory Eatery and Spirits in Ballston Spa; 6-8 p.m. Feb. 11 at the Ford Community Center in Saratoga Springs; and 7-8:30 p.m. Feb. 20, at the Saratoga Arts Council?s Dee Sarno Theater. For more information, call 888-344-7685 or e-mail.