The Spirituals Database provides searchable information about Negro Spirituals set for the solo voice and recorded on over 3,300 tracks from more than 320 sound recordings. Launched in March, 2015, the database is a resource for discovering and researching the Spiritual’s potential role in developing a singer’s repertoire.
The following announcement has reached us from Randye Jones (Grinnell College Libraries, USA):
The Spirituals Database provides searchable information about Negro Spirituals set for the solo voice and recorded on over 3,300 tracks from more than 320 sound recordings. Launched in March 2015, the database is a resource for discovering and researching the Spiritual’s potential role in developing a singer’s repertoire.
Information in The Spirituals Database includes vocal and/or instrumental accompanying forces, the voice type of the soloists, and links to additional resources about the recordings. Two new features–a developing assessment of the amount of dialect the singers used in their recorded performances and tagging songs by theme–further expand the range of searchable data.
The primary–but far from exclusive–audience for The Spirituals Database is the vocalist, the vocal coach/teacher and the accompanist who is looking for these recorded resources. Even the composer, music historian, educator, librarian, researcher, or enthusiast who wants to hear these great songs performed will have reason to seek out information about the wide range of recordings–including a number of rare or out-of-print long-playing (33 1/3 rpm) and 78 rpm albums, audio cassettes and 45 rpm discs, as well as demonstration recordings from Spirituals music score compilations–represented in the database.
The Spirituals Database is located at http://www.spirituals-