Music on Campus
Item Name: Newspaper advertisement, The Temptations
Date: October 7, 1969
Description: Newspaper advertisement for the "Student Association Homecoming Concert" featuring "The Temptations" and that the tickets are avaible at the Student Union at the Information Desk.
Image Reflection: The article only represents a image of "The Temptations" and informing students where the tickets can be obtained. With this information being said, the newspaper advertisement had not been submitted to be shown as a sign of African Americans growing in MSU, the advertisement can be lead to be seen as a possible sign of resilience with "The Tempations" performing in a segregated south and with many artists being scared of performing in the south, they had came to Starkville and performed for everyone. This can show that African Americans had the power to do as the pleased during this time of integration and with artists performing in a predominantly racists school, this had showed power to the people. “The Temptations” coming to perform in the south, especially at MSU, which was a school that was in the process of the integration process can be seen as a sign of strength, with many black artists not being supported in the south, with many people showing the group respect and showing up to their concert showed the integration process was working. “The Temptations” performing can be seen as a cultural milestone, with this group performing motown soul, which as a specific genre of music that is
important to African American culture, and with them performing at MSU shows the school’s acknowledgement with the integration process, showing positivity from both sides. I had chose this advertisement, because I was looking for music related topics and I have heard of this music group before and know some of their songs. With this being said, the topic of Bulldog Bash was still around a recent and with "The Tempations" visiting MSU, this relates to the topic of Ludacris coming to MSU to perform. The main importance of this advertisement is that African Americans performing music in the South, most importantly at a south university in the
integration process of African Americans, these performances can be seen as a step forward of more African Americans involved in the music industry, not only at MSU, but in the south, where racism had thrived
Item Name: Newspaper Article, Black Voices Give Versatile
Date: December 7, 1971
Description: Black Voices perform a plethora of songs at a concert, showing versatility in the black community within the music industry.
Image Reflection: The image represents the systematic racism that African Americans had to go through everyday and any activity that they had participated in during this time period. Black artists were being discredited from their performances due to the accusation that these performers are only able to perform one certain genre of music, which is spiritual music. This had made performing for black artists difficult in the south with these assumptions, leading for artists not wanting to perform in the south. "Black Voices" had performed at Lee Hall Auditorium and after the performance, there were many comments made on their performance, not bad comments, but comments regarding how stunned they were based on how greatly they had performed, compared to what other people believed they were going to perform. One comment states that " "I had no idea of the broad repertoire of the Black Voices and they sounded very professional at times", while another comment stated that " I was expecting mostly spiritual music, but I was really suprised. It was really great", showing the narrative that people had on black musicians and that the image that all of these musicians sound a play the same music. with the women in the choir not performing how people would expect them to perform, showing a plethora of music genres, shocking the crowd. This performance showed that African Americans don’t only know spiritual music and can perform multiple genres of music, allowing the integration process to make steps forward in the music industry in the south as well, opening genres of music to both sides of the spectrum.