Edwin Smith, former editor of Rejoice magazine, center, speaks at the Center for The Study of Southern Culture’s Music Symposium of the South in 2012.
OXFORD, Miss. — Once upon a time at the University of Mississippi, there existed a little-known publication called “REJOICE!: The Gospel Music Magazine.”
I know this for two reasons. First, because I read about it when the first issue debuted circa 1987. Second, I was privileged to serve as its managing co-editor for the last two years of its brief five-year existence.
Published by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, REJOICE! was one in a trio of music magazines published every two months. The other two periodicals were called Ole Time Country (also no longer around) and Living Blues (the best-known and most profitable of the three, which is still around today). Its office, more like a big storage closet, actually, was in the Johnson Commons over what was then the Rebel Shop and later home for Human Resources.
While it never fully enjoyed mainstream popularity or commercial profitability, REJOICE! was– and is still– special. Initially, its creators envisioned it as somewhere between a scholarly academic journal and a trade publication for the burgeoning gospel music scene. Only in REJOICE! could you read about both crossover contemporary Christian music artists (i.e. Amy Grant, Take 6), Southern gospel groups (i.e. the LeFavre and Happy Goodman families), urban gospel stars (i.e. the Winans) and traditional quartets (i.e. the Sensational Nightingales, Canton Spirituals). In the magazine’s efforts to appeal to everyone, it featured unknown local acts and rising gospel musicals right along with the popular artists of the day and living legends. White, black, old, young, male, female, Protestant, Catholic all had access to and made appearances in REJOICE! at one time or another.
It was a great job being co-editor, along with Sidney Lamar “Pepper” Smith II of Gulfport, a master’s student in Southern studies at the time. Even though we shared the same last name, Pepper and I were literally as different as night and day. I am black, he is white. I was older, married with young children. He was single, in a long-distance relationship and in grad school. I liked “new” gospel music. Pepper liked “old school” gospel.
Together, Pepper and I served the university, the center, people we worked with and our various audiences. We got to attend the Gospel Music Association’s annual convention in Nashville (which included the DOVE Awards), the 25th anniversary of the Gospel Music Workshop of America in Chicago and a gospel music symposium held at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
We interviewed some of our favorite gospel celebrities, enjoyed complimentary tickets to gospel music concerts and reviewed all the latest gospel music releases months before they hit the shelves. We even sponsored our own gospel concert at Oxford High School featuring the UM Black Student Union Choir and the Sensational Nightingales of Durham, N.C. When I completed my master’s degree in journalism, REJOICE! was the subject of my thesis.
Why do I share all this with you who are reading this blog? Perhaps it’s because I believe it can serve as a model for where we are presently. Ole Miss is (like my experience with REJOICE! was) a mixed bag of ethnicities, beliefs, cultures, experiences, backgrounds, achievements and experiences. Each of us is different, yet we all have a place here and an opportunity to create something wonderful and meaningful together. Sure, there will always be times when we won’t see eye-to-eye, but that doesn’t have to yield division and dissention. There is (or at least there can be) unity in diversity, if we so choose. We really can all get along.
The magazine may be no more, but the memories of relationships found and lessons learned through REJOICE! will always be with me.