Coming in May: Rare Public Performance by North Carolina's Own Mangum & Company Shout Band

April 26, 2010 - PRLog -- The Mangum & Company Shout Band, led by Cedric Mangum, will offer a rare public performance on Saturday, May 8 in Cary. This 15-20 member ensemble from the Charlotte Mother House of Prayer performs music inspired by Dixieland jazz, blues, gospel, and old-time spirituals. The shout band tradition originated from the exuberant church music of African-American communities in the Southeast during the 1920s. Shout band music is primarily played for church services, tent revivals, parades, baptisms, funerals and other special occasions.

With its sousaphone and baritone, the trombone–based shout band is an integral part of the worship services of the United House of Prayer, an African-American Pentecostal denomination found in urban and rural areas along the East Coast from Boston, Massachusetts to Charlotte, North Carolina. “Shout” describes the singing style and form of worship found in some 20th-century African-American religious denominations. Speaking directly to God through the “shout,” black Pentecostals offered the direct experiences and the emotional touch of the Spirit.

Musically, the “modern” (post-W.W. II) shout band style is up-tempo, duple meter, bright, and responsive to the congregation. It also incorporates a chordal wall of sound as players form a semi-circle with the leader playing and directing in front. The musical form consists of three sections. The recitative, played by the lead trombone in a slow improvisatory manner, constitutes a “call” for which the row of tenor trombones play a fundamental chord progression. The second section establishes tempo and sets the melody through repeated and then ornamented verses. The third section is “the shout,” with a call-and-response pattern and a rhythmic cadence called “backtimin’” or “polin’” in which the sousaphone, playing a walking bass line, provides the foundation for hocket and hemiola rhythms. The lengths of the sections are determined by the lead trombone who is responding to the congregation. Shout bands may play continuously for up to three hours at religious services.

The Mangum and Company Shout Band appeared under the name The Clouds of Heaven in the first-ever anthology of shout band music produced by Smithsonian Folkways, Saints Paradise: Trombone Shout Bands from the United House of Prayer (1999). Music samples are available for download at www.folkways.si.edu, keywords “Saint’s Paradise.”

For additional directions and more information, please call 919-807-7900 or 919-664-8333. This performance is free and open to the public. For a complete listing of other upcoming PineCone concerts, visit www.pinecone.org

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PineCone—the Piedmont Council of Traditional Music, is a private, nonprofit, charitable membership organization dedicated to preserving, presenting and promoting traditional music, dance and other folk performing arts.