A brand new museum is coming to the Old West End.
This Saturday, the Toledo Sacred Steel and History Museum will celebrate its grand opening with a double ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Located inside the Collingwood Presbyterian Church, 2109 Collingwood Blvd., the museum will serve as a preservation center for two musical cultures with a rich history in Toledo, the Sacred Steel Community and the Toledo Quartet Musical Association.
The celebration starts with the double ribbon cutting ceremony at 11 am, with refreshments to follow at 1 pm. A special concert featuring a Sacred Steel artist, a Toledo Quartet artist and a spoken word poetry performance will run from 2 pm to 5 pm.
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The steel guitar has been used in African American gospel music since the 1930s. The music tradition is known as Sacred Steel.
“For over 80 years African Americans have used this instrument, you know, in the church worship services to give praise unto the Lord,” Del Ray Grace, co-found of the Toledo Sacred Steel and History Museum, told WTOL11.
According to Del Ray, there was no documentation of Steel Guitar music other than in church recordings, so he and his wife, Kelli had a goal of creating an archive of the music.
“We are preserving this history so that it doesn’t go extinct,” Del Ray said.
In 2009 they started collecting images and videos of African American Steel Guitar players.
The museum features a plethora of memorabilia from Sacred Steel musicians from around the United States, including pictures, artifacts and guitars used by musicians. An archive center is also located inside the museum featuring five touchscreen computers where museum attendees can watch and listen to audio and video recordings, interviews, documentaries, concerts and much more.
According to Del Ray, the archive contains the largest repository of African American Sacred Steel music in the United States.
Admission to the museum is free and open to the public.
For more information, visit facebook.com/gospelmusiq71.
