Soulful Sounds

Music from Baylor's Black Gospel Music Restoration Project now available for free on iTunes U

Sixteen songs from Baylor University's Black Gospel Music Restoration Project are now available as free downloads on iTunes U, a dedicated area within the iTunes Store. There, you can also hear interviews about the project and 180 partial tracks of the 1,500 rare records Baylor has obtained since the project began in 2006. 

Led by Robert Darden, BSED '76, associate professor of journalism, the project is a digital record and catalog of the most at-risk music from the black gospel music tradition from the 1940s to the 1980s. The project's ultimate goal is to have a copy of every song released by every black gospel artist or group during that time period.

"Baylor is happy to be a part of iTunes U and to offer exciting projects such as this one, free to the public," Colin Witt, BS '95, director of electronic communications at Baylor, said. "The opportunity to feature unique research work taking place at Baylor is exactly the reason we wanted to be a part of the iTunes U community."

To browse the entire collection or find out more about donating or loaning materials to the project, go to www.baylor.edu/lib/gospel.