When Colleges Sang: The Story of Singing in American College Life (2013) by J. Lloyd Winstead

The history of song in American colleges is a compelling focal point toward illuminating how student lives were influenced through this particular form of performance.In When Colleges Sang: The Story of Singing in American College Life, J. Lloyd Winstead offers the reader a chronology of singing traditions that originated in the 17th-century Puritan culture of the United States.He suggests that singing in campus life had a broad impact on the collegiate traditions that developed right from institutional inception.The book contains rich resources from original documents that include published college songbooks, cultural and musical histories, newspaper accounts of performances, and texts from books and journals among other historical forms of document research.There is a wealth of information, such as song text excerpts and photographs, extensive notes, a note on sources, a bibliography, and an index that creates an impressive compendium.However, it seems there was a deliberate choice not to delve into a deeper and critical analysis of the presence of singing on campus.I found myself wishing for more stories in this history to enhance the encyclopaedic collection.Winstead introduces his thesis with the argument that because singing was a part of both sacred and secular Puritan life, it became a significant aspect of college life.Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, become the threads on which the book hangs its history.The extracurricular and sacred singing, from the 17th century well into the late 19th century, emerges as a white, male, and middle-class tradition that later spreads to women students and the nascent African American colleges, but the author does not go beyond the surface documentation of what songs were created, by whom, and when.The introduction and first two chapters focus on how casual singing and the playing of musical instruments steadily gained popularity in a society that considered music as wasting "valuable time for more serious pursuits" (p. 7).Winstead makes the sociological connection between the rise of popular music in colleges and the rise of the same in American culture.He recounts the advent of the publishing broadsides of song texts and the emergence of singing schools for church and college as improved singing was considered vital for reviving religious rituals and creating more accomplished commencement ceremonies.Winstead introduces significant historical authors or historical moments, recounting in detail their importance to the singing tradition and gives the reader various perspectives of previous historical work.The detail was meticulous but I began to wish for more cultural analysis from the author.Besides the periodization of chapters, Winstead also divides each chapter with subheadings

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