Archive: Arts & Entertainment

The Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers (DCJS) will present an afternoon of Negro Spirituals at 3 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 28 at St. Paul's United Methodist Church (402 N. Aurora St., Ithaca).

The DCJS, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, is dedicated to preserving the Negro Spiritual and its themes of sorrow, despair, and hope to promote racial healing and social justice; and to furthering civil rights leader Dorothy Cotton's message of freedom and hope through music.

DCJS has more than 90 members, including some 20 Ithaca College voice students, who perform many of the solos, alongside community members of different ages (11 to 81), heritages and backgrounds. Founding Director Dr. Baruch Whitehead, associate professor of music education at Ithaca College, not only conducts this soulful music, but also shows how some songs had hidden meanings or special significance to the enslaved Africans who first sang them.

The diverse chorus performs locally and throughout the region; the singers have performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., the Clemens Center in Elmira, and in Rochester, Buffalo, Toronto, Harlem and Brooklyn. They will perform in Washington D.C. and in Goldsboro, N.C., over Mother's Day Weekend 2019.

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