{"id":247,"date":"2012-02-17T16:40:16","date_gmt":"2012-02-17T16:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/?p=247"},"modified":"2012-02-17T21:09:29","modified_gmt":"2012-02-17T21:09:29","slug":"why-heavenly-sight-is-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/?p=247","title":{"rendered":"Why Heavenly Sight is important"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 227px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/oldweirdamerica.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/03\/blindwilliejohnsonpic.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"217\" height=\"247\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blind Willie Johnson, the only known image of him.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>As you probably know, we\u2019re in the midst of trying to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/1099992656\/heavenly-sight-a-vision-out-of-blindness\">raise money<\/a> to help promote the <em>Heavenly Sight<\/em> hour-long public radio documentary and also establish a visually-impaired-friendly website.\u00a0 In the course of doing research for this blog it became very clear how incredibly lacking the web is in resources about blind gospel music.<\/p>\n<p>Searching for information on the blind gospel tradition yields a great deal of scattered information, mostly dominated by the Blind Boys of Alabama\u2014who are incredible.\u00a0 However, searching for something even as specific as \u201cblind gospel music\u201d yields disparate information and much of it again dominated by the Blind Boys of Alabama.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BrQZnU57oWM\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There were some interesting resources that I was able to discover including a neat <a href=\"http:\/\/digitallibrary.usc.edu\/gmha\/controller\/timeline.htm\">interactive Gospel time-line<\/a> from the University of Southern California website.\u00a0 Additionally, NPR has a page from 2004 that gives a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=4233793\">quick overview of Gospel<\/a>, but focuses prickly on the sighted Mahalia Jackson.\u00a0 The NPR page does lists several blind performers tunes as among the 25 most influential Gospel recordings, but not much more than that.\u00a0 Google reader has several books cataloged for online reading including the 1995 <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=EzZ7GjkQixkC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=The+golden+age+of+gospel+by+Horace+Clarence+Boyer&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=qXc-T8WeDKG90AG1p-S-Bw&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=book-thumbnail&amp;resnum=1&amp;ved=0CD0Q6wEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=The%20golden%20age%20of%20gospel%20by%20Horace%20Clarence%20Boyer&amp;f=false\"><em>The golden age of gospel<\/em> by Horace Clarence Boyer<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/global.crossrhythms.co.uk\/article_images\/thumb_6601.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"248\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Arizona Dranes, there are few pictures of Ms. Dranes<\/p><\/div>\n<p>It became very clear as I was trying to find what others have to say on the web about the blind Gospel tradition that almost nobody has said anything about the blind Gospel tradition.\u00a0 Individual artists have information but there is no centralized location to get clear information that makes connections to the world we live in now.\u00a0 The lack of information and dialog is even more acute when considering female blind Gospel performers.\u00a0 What we\u2019re trying to do with <em>Heavenly Sight<\/em> is something truly pioneering and is the result of over a year of research, original interviews and cataloging recordings.\u00a0 Gospel music and the initial success of its blind performers helped transform American music into a tradition with soul and that&#8217;s a story worth sharing.\u00a0 We\u2019re excited to bring you the story.<\/p>\n<p>Matthew LM<br \/>\nMember of the Heavenly Sight Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As you probably know, we\u2019re in the midst of trying to raise money to help promote the Heavenly Sight hour-long public radio documentary and also establish a visually-impaired-friendly website.\u00a0 In the course of doing research for this blog it became very clear how incredibly lacking the web is in resources about blind gospel music. Searching [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[17,15,9,16,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=247"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253,"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}