UHCL : Vienna Carroll Sings Of Self-Determination, Strength In Bayou Theater

Press release from University of Houston-Clear Lake:

January 21, 2022

When Vienna Carroll was a child, she connected deeply to the music of her great-grandmother's
Pentecostal church. When she was in college, she discovered a way to combine her love
of that music with her passion for African American history and literature, and she
found her calling as a performer. She'll be sharing her particular brand of gospel,
history and storytelling on the Bayou Theater stage Friday, Feb. 4 at 7:30 p.m.

"When I went to school, we studied opera and show tunes in music, but I didn't have
a heart for that," Carroll said. "Then, when I went to college at Yale University,
I studied the early African American ethno-musicology, and majored in African American
Studies. That's when I got a book of selected early African American spirituals, performed
formally and arranged."

She said she'd always kept in mind how those songs were used by the early Blacks who
sang them. "I thought about how these songs were used in their homes and in the fields.
I heard about how they were used as 'escape' songs, and wondered how they got to freedom
— what was the soundscape of that? I didn't have an answer."

After visiting the Old York Historical Society in her hometown of York, Pennsylvania,
she discovered information that impacted they way she performed her music.

"I found history about York as a hotbed of abolitionist and Underground Railroad activity,"
she said. "We'd grown up hearing that Quakers were the only ones running the Underground
Railroad, but learning all this turned my thinking on its head."

She discovered the strength and the self-determination of the former slaves who had
traveled through York, and realized that trait was not explored or amplified enough
in the African American freedom story.

"It brought back to me that the music that had moved me so much in church and studied
at Yale told our freedom stories," she said. "Those songs held our freedom at times
when we couldn't write things down. They were more than just spirituals or work songs
for emotional uplifting — I learned I could marry these songs to the missing history
and talk about different elements of American history, especially the self-determination
of Black people in their own freedom story."

That realization, she said, gave her the center for her music. "I felt that I had
a mission," she said.

"My performance is about combining music with history and be able to celebrate," she
explained. "And, I love to groove, and for folks to sing along so you'll certainly
have a lot of fun at my concert."

She added that she believes singing opens people up in a certain way. "Singing has
the power to help people receive and uplift," she said. "The message I'm bringing
is that in our songs, we can see how we were able to preserve ourselves and our history,
our desire for freedom, and how we freed ourselves."

Together, Carroll and her three bandmates, a guitarist, a bass guitarist and a washboard
player, hope to recreate the old sound with a new sensibility. "It's a celebratory
evening, and I want to lift everyone up," she said.

In celebration of Black History Month at UH-Clear Lake, visitors are invited to the
Art Gallery for an exhibition of Houston artist Floyd Newsum's paintings and sculptures at 5
p.m., then to proceed to the Bayou Theater for an evening with Vienna Carroll. For
more information and to purchase tickets to her performance, visit the Bayou Theater.

This press release was produced by University of Houston-Clear Lake. The views expressed here are the author’s own.