Kinston’s library was filled with clapping, praising and singing Sunday afternoon during The History of Gospel Music program, a celebration of Black History Month.
The event was sponsored by the Friends of the Kinston-Lenoir County Public Library and the Community Council for the Arts.
Booker T. Wiggins, a Kinston native, poured his heart into “You’ve Been Good to Me,” a song about Jesus Christ.
After several soulful outpours of “Oh how much,” Wiggins gave all he had to finish with “Oh how much he cares for me.”
The couple of hundred people gave him a standing ovation.
“I had a (musical) group when I was about 14,” he said. The 80-year-old has been singing ever since.
Two vocalists, Bonita Burney-Simmons and Lessette Kornegay, are part of the African American Music Trail, a state arts program with a trailhead in Kinston.
Kornegay sang “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” with as much deep emotion as Wiggins, but she belted that number out. She, too, received a standing ovation.
Sandy Landis, arts council executive director, said this event is just one of several the arts council is offering this month to celebrate Black History Month. She presented a brief history of the music trail, a project of the arts council.
“There are 65 musicians and vocalists that were interviewed for the trail in Lenoir County,” she told The Free Press. “And there’s just a huge history here.”
Landis said Kinston is at the “epicenter” of the music trail project in the eastern part of the state. The official kick-off is planned for the fall, after a trail book — featuring interviews with local musicians and a history of local music venues — is published.
Gospel, jazz, rhythm and blues, funk and hip-hop make up the music of the area, she said.
Music — and therefore the project — is hoped to open up communication among people in the area, she said.
“(The project) really is telling a very significant story that I don’t believe has been told in this community,” Landis said. “So it’s a really important way to celebrate that story and to also celebrate where we are today and where we might be going.”
Construction of the African-American Music Park is currently under way with the opening targeted for this summer. The park is located where a warehouse once stood — South Queen Street and Spring Hill — and where vocalist greats such as Louie Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald sang for thousands of people, Landis said.
The music trail is a prominent state tourism project that should draw people into Kinston, Landis said.
“It gives this community one more way to really look at our heritage,” she said, “at the people who came before us and the people we are now. … To me, it’s really telling the whole story.”
Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margeret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.