Reverend William Dargan

Reverend William Dargan

Advisor - Black University

William Thomas Dargan is a published ethnomusicologist and an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church. On one hand, his progressive Wesleyan theology has been influenced by an early adulthood Pentecostal conversion experience and, on the other later in life, by Roman Catholic as well as Greek Orthodox worship and spirituality.  Dargan grew up listening to Dr. Watts hymn singing as well as rhythm and blues and, from the age of 10, played in bands and sang in choirs. As a teen he led the tenor section in an excellent high school choir, directed by C. W. Francis, who was both choir director, organist and principal of Boggs Academy (1906-1986), a black Presbyterian boarding school, founded on the Tuskegee model of work and study, which its founder, Booker T. Washington brought to Tuskegee Institute from his alma mater, Hampton University. All of this was the rough childhood analogue of what literary critic Albert Murray calls the Saturday-night-Sunday-morning paradox in Black music and culture. Dargan has performed his compositions on jazz saxophones.  He has lived the issues of blues angst and the heights of gospel joy.  His book on Dr. Watts Hymn Singing in African American Music is a scholarly attempt to understand and integrate what an eclectic musical and spiritual life. He still listens to African American hip hop and European classical music. He has lived through the transition from acoustic instruments, acetate media and analog recording methods into digital recordings and the Information age.

Rev. W. T. Dargan
Full Elder Retired
South Carolina Conference 
United Methodist Church