Schools
Red Bank Regional Celebrates Black History Month with Stirring Spirituals and Prose
African spirituals and powerful prose mark the contributions and tribulations of people of color in America.
Red Bank Regional celebrated Black History Month with a soul uplifting show of music and prose on Friday. Opening the event was Dr. Gretna Wilkinson, the creative writing teacher in the school's Visual and Performing Arts Academy. Dr. Wilkinson hosted and narrated the event that included a stirring performance by the RBR choral majors.
Voicing an 18-minute choral medley tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, entitled "His Light Still Shines," the choral majors fulfilled Wilkinson’s apt assessment that the group performs with an ability that goes way beyond their years. "His Light Still Shines" was arranged by Moses Hogan, an African-American composer and arranger of choral music. He was best known for his very popular and accessible settings of spirituals. "His Light Still Shines" is an arrangement of Hogan’s original work and assimilated spirituals.
“The piece is probably the most prolific arrangement of the African spiritual in the 20th century,” RBR choral teacher Kris Zook said. “It is a very powerful cantata (song); at its crux, it encourages us to think of Dr. Martin Luther King not just as a hero of African Americans, but as a voice of change for all people.”
The keynote speaker for the event was a familiar face to many at RBR. Gilda Rogers, impresario of Frank Talk: Art Bistro and Books in Red Bank, is also the former director of the SOURCE, a school-based youth services program. Rogers has since moved on to host and produce her own television series, Frank Talk, as well as many live events and shows at her café and around Red Bank and Monmouth County.
Rogers addressed the student body in a casual, funny, conversational way. But her tone shifted during the delivery of her powerful, poetic speech. Hardly a speech at all, Rogers words rang out like a cultural sermon. Recounting hundreds of years of suffering, oppression and prejudice, Rogers followed up each example of hardship with a resounding “Where do you go from there?”
Rogers concluded her address on a hopeful note, calling on the youth to seize the day. “This is your time,” she said, “embrace this moment in your life and determine yourself not to be torn asunder, but to liberate yourself, so that you too might reap all that life has to offer you…and that is greatness.”
