Celebrating the African American Roots of Barbershop Harmony

The thought of Barbershop Harmony or Barbershop quartets brings to mind four guys in straw hats and sleeve garters… and they are always white.

However, recent music scholarship has shown that barbershop harmony is actually rooted in the African-American music tradition of the 19th century.  Barbershop harmony originated with African American quartets in the late 19^th and early 20th century, along with Blues and Jazz, which share the same musical foundations.

Largely lost to musical history is that so many jazz greats, like Scott Joplin, Sydney Bechet, Jelly Roll Morton, W. C. Handy, and even the great Louis Armstrong, sang in barbershop quartets on street corners as young men.

The harmonies and rhythms they and others developed served as a basis for what followed: Jazz, Blues and modern Gospel.

The inaugural Barbershop Revival took place on the NC Central campus on March 22-23 and was a great success for the student participants. The NCCU students enjoyed working under our clinicians, Bill Adams and Debbie Cleveland. Watching the excitement and rapid improvement of these very talented students was a thrill. You can get a glimpse HERE.

Not only did the students enjoy taking part, each of the performers, HALO, GQ, Crossroads, and Fairfield Four expressed how pleased and honored they were to have been invited to participate in an event like this.

Once again, the Carolinas District is leading the way to the future with innovative new programs. In this case, we showed that our outreach into the African American community to celebrate barbershop’s musical roots was welcomed with open arms. And 50 more singers were exposed to and enjoyed singing barbershop harmony.

We were pleased to have Society CEO Marty Monson and Harmony Foundation’s Rick Taylor both attend to see first hand this cutting edge program. They were able to see first hand our demonstration of being radically inclusive.