Draft:The Soulful Art Forms

The Soulful Art Forms is an artistic programming platform coined and developed in 1997 by Unity Performing Arts Foundation (UNITY), an American performing arts organization founded in Fort Wayne, Indiana by Marshall White.

Background

Unity Performing Arts Unity's strategy was to create an artistic platform that would increase minority participation in the arts and attract young people from multiple backgrounds by exposing them to the arts relevant to their generation.

Unity Performing Arts Unity's multi-faceted artistic vision brings choral music, dance, drama, creative writing, public speaking and instrumental music under a single mission. Its artistic focus is to shape and develop natural talent and create an educational platform for students to learn and perform mainstream soulful art forms.

Unity Performing Arts Unity's artistic focus is to shape and develop natural talent and create an educational platform for students to learn and perform mainstream soulful art forms. This artistic concept is also coupled with substance-based elements that help give young people a deeper sense of life and their own personal growth. Unity Performing Arts Unity believe that young people born and raised in the 21st century will need a much deeper experience in the arts that goes far beyond entertainment and activity and helps give them a strong, wholesome sense of self and expression.

Understanding The Soulful Arts Forms

The term "soulful" simply means, full of or expressing deep feeling or emotion.

Soulful arts forms are artistic forms that are performed with a free will to express feeling and emotion when necessary. The presentation connects with the listener and their heart is touch by the connection or the message being presented.

Art forms such as singing, dance, drama, creative writing, public speaking and music can all be performed in a soulful fashion. Hence, that is why they can be called "Soulful Art" forms.

Understanding the term "Soulful"

Soulful has nothing to do with the intellect, but rather the heart, soul and emotions.

Being soulful engages the heart, soul, emotions and the body. Your expressions are experienced by those around you.

Soulful has nothing to do with what color you are or what background you come from. It's not black nor white, it's what's in the heart and felt in the emotions.

Every human being has an emotional side that is triggered by some external source whether it be a person, a life problem, a song, a poem, or music, etc.

The word soulful can be describe in three words that constitute the three "Es":

experience
emotional
expressive

The text of the music is derived from a life experience. When that message is communicated through singing, acting, dancing, speaking and music, it can create an emotional atmosphere that inspires some type of expressive gestures from the listener during the presentation.

The message represented in the song is not demeaning, violent or distasteful. The message represents an experience that touches the soul and stirs the heart. This is what we call a soulful experience.

This can be a moving experience that can be used as an educational tool to enlighten, inspire or just simply expose others to experiences not truly known to their culture.

Origin of the term

The term soulful was something experienced in the early ancient civilizations of Africa. In the early Egyptian culture, Africans introduced the soulful experience in their dance, movement, singing, and visual and sculpture arts activities. They celebrated, inspired, strengthened, and entertained one another, and used the arts to communicate their everyday lifestyle and preserve their history.

The term was first experienced in America through the artistic expressions of the early African-American slaves who were brought over from Africa in the early 1600s. America begins experiencing soulful singing from the introduction of the first singing group called The Fisk University Jubilee Singers, formed in 1871 by George L. White. The sound of the all-black singing group was a new and exciting experience to the all-white audiences of the south. Their performance presented an experience that moved the audiences to tears and ushered them into a soulful experienced that produced emotional expressions.

In the early 1900s, African Americans continued their soulful mission in American and wrote songs and music under great oppression as a way to escape the overwhelming stress of slavery. They sang, danced and celebrated with hand-clapping, shouts of praise, and deep soulful emotions. They were not afraid to express their feelings and emotions in their artistic creativity.

This form of expression was later valued by northern white audiences in the late 19th century after listening to their slaves in the church services and celebrations.

The soulful presentation provided cultural sustenance to African Americans in intense racial oppression. They used their soulful singing, dancing, writing, speaking, drawing, painting, acting, and craft and sculpture-making to express their deep pains of slavery But brilliantly demonstrated their internal greatness.

What is soulful music?

Soulful music consists of the sounds of many rich and soul stirring styles of music. It was composed and performed primarily by African Americans first, and later adopted by other ethnic groups.

Soulful music comes from the heart and soul and is performed with deep emotions and expressive gestures. The music and lyrics are mainly composed from a life experience.

Styles

Styles of soulful music:

Work & Folk Songs
Spirituals
Blues
Gospel
Jazz
Rhythm & Blues
Some forms of Rap
Hip Hop
Neo-Soul
The early years of Rock & Roll
Country music

Common roots of the soulful genres

The soulful genres were all born and developed in America and later embraced by artists in other countries.

The roots are in both the slavery era and the West African societies from which most African-American slaves were originally taken.

They possess soul stirring and heart touching messages that touch the center of our emotions, and cause us to respond by moving, clapping, dancing, moving our heads, rocking, and praising.

Authentically performing the soulful vocal style

Each style requires a particular type of vocal approach for the singer to capture the real nuances of the genre.

The vocalist must master the ability to sing with the head and chest voice, therefore allowing the vocalist to project their voice when necessary, demonstrating a deep soulful emotion that is accompanied with moving facial and bodily expressions.

Traditional vocal teachers, in most cases, teach vocal performance from the classical European approach that embraces more of the head voice technique. While some of the vocal techniques used in traditional training are useful and common in the soulful singing style, there are still many techniques and nuances used when singing soulful music that is not used while singing classical music.

References

UNITY Performing Arts: Creating opportunities for excellence through the vehicle of performing arts.
UNITY Performing Arts, Inc. Great Nonprofits.
A Soulful Summer Spectacular Tribute to the Music of Disney. FWIS News.
Career Path: Making a difference to the tune of Unity. Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly.
Marshall White: Mover and Shaker. whatzup.com.
Expanding Horizons. Great Fort Wayne, Inc.
Voices of Unity Share Their Song Of Success. WBOI.
UNITY Capital Campaign Booklet. Feb 19, 2017.