Name: Perceptions and Benefits of Curricular Gospel Choir Participation Amongst Postsecondary Students: A Preliminary Exploration from a Canadian Perspective
Start: 2025-06-07T09:00:00-0500
End: 2025-06-07T09:30:00-0500

Welcome to the APME Memphis 2025 conference. Here, you’ll be able to register for the conference and update your Sched profile. The conference schedule will be available in late spring 2025. At that time, you can view the schedule and select the presentations you’d like to attend. If you have any questions, please visit our conference website or contact us at conference@popularmusiceducation.org We look forward to coming together as a community June 4–7, 2025.

Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - 9:30am CDT

SPAC - Hodges Choral Room

Gospel music has rich cultural roots in African American history, has connections to jazz and blues, and has influenced several popular music genres such as R&B, soul and funk. The existence of curricular gospel music programs at Canadian public postsecondary institutions is extremely limited. Furthermore, gospel music, like many other forms of Black music, has historically been deemed as not worthy of study in the academy (Boyer & Moore, 2010; Burke, 2021; Cox, 1996). The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions and benefits of curricular gospel choirs amongst students who have been participating in such courses at the only three Canadian public postsecondary institutions currently offering them: York University, Humber College and the University of Toronto. This research was inspired by the work of Dawson (1986), Dilling (1995), McCrary (2001), Pinto (2022), Pope & Moore (2004), Sablo (2008) and Strayhorn (2011), who each conducted studies related to the perceptions and benefits of extracurricular and/or curricular gospel choirs from the perspective of student participants, and in some cases, additional stakeholders, at U.S.-based postsecondary institutions. Collective case study (Creswell & Guetterman, 2019; Stake, 1995, 2005) was the methodology employed to conduct this research and semi-structured interviews with current and former students from each of the three Canadian postsecondary gospel programs was used to facilitate data collection. This session will present initial findings from this study, which may inform Canadian and global postsecondary institutions who are considering the inclusion of gospel music studies to help diversify their music curricula.

Speakers

Darren Hamilton

Assistant Professor, Music Education, University of Toronto

Dr. Darren Hamilton is an assistant professor of music education and the founding director of the University of Toronto Faculty of Music Gospel Choir. His work with the gospel choir was featured in three recent CBC Radio documentaries and at the 2024 Toronto Jazz Festival. Dr. Hamilton’s... Read More →

Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - 9:30am CDT
SPAC - Hodges Choral Room 3800 Central Ave, Memphis, TN 38117

APME Memphis 2025

Darren Hamilton

Sign up or log in to save this to your schedule, view media, leave feedback and see who's attending!