REL discussion 5

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Gospel Music & The Black Church: A Snapshot

REL 352

Oral Tradition

Defined as the transmission by word of mouth through ceremony, song, drum, and folk wisdom of the mores, customs and religious rites of a people

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MOUTH (ORAL)

EAR (AURAL)

HEART (LIBERATION

Gospel Music

  • One of the most significant musical creations to emerge out of African American culture
  • Post-Civil War creation – rooted in the Black experience after emancipation
  • Rooted in the blues – born in northern urban America versus southern rural America of the spiritual
  • Still gets very little attention in academia
  • With the Black church can be considered American fruit from the African root

Gospel Music

  • A form of gospel music parallels most popular music
  • Constant back and forth between the two
  • Both a repertoire of music & a style of singing/performance
  • Certain characteristics can be added to nearly any kind of music and result in a gospel sound

Gospel Music &
Secular Music

  • Transfer of gospel influence to the world of entertainment

Aretha Franklin Natural Woma n Precious Lord

Sam Cooke Jesus Be A Fence

Two-way street

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Gospel Music

  • Oral transmission – written score is skeleton
  • Sacred text separates it from secular counterpart
  • Uses call and response
  • Percussive element is important
  • Expressive range is preferred over tonal purity
  • Individual creativity highlighted through improvisation/spontaneous creation
  • Musicians seek to reach listeners on an immediate emotional level – use of stories
  • Term ‘gospel’ coined by Thomas A. Dorsey in early 20s
  • Dorsey profoundly impacted by works of Charles Tindley who was the first to compose and publish ‘gospel’ songs (1916)
  • Tindley gained wide recognition with songs published in Gospel Pearls 1921
  • Dorsey’s most popular song: Precious Lord

Thomas Andrew Dorsey – Father of Gospel Music – 1899 - 1993

  • 1916 moved to Chicago
  • Melding of blues elements with elements of religious hymns = gospel blues or ‘Dorsey’ song
  • Responsible for formulating the choral gospel blues style
  • Struggled with faith & being jazz musician
  • Played piano for Ma Rainey, the Mother of the Blues Ma Rainey

Kenneth Morris – 1917-1989

  • Introduced the Hammond organ into gospel music
  • With Sallie Martin created the Martin and Morris Music Studio; Teaching School in 1987
  • Wrote some of gospel’s most memorable songs, including Just A Closer Walk With Thee

Gospel Instrumentation

  • Drums
  • Organ (Hammond B3 – Kenneth Morris 1940s)
  • Keyboards
  • Piano
  • Bass
  • Guitar
  • Tambourine
  • Handclaps, foot stomping etc

3 aspects of gospel music

  • Musical
  • Cultural
  • Religious

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Musical Aspects

  • Timbre – ‘ebonics’ purposeful distortion of words, coloring tone
  • Instrumentation
  • Improvisation

Textual

Melodic

rhythmic

  • Form - Verse, chorus, vamp, tag
  • Rhythm – syncopation, gospel waltz
  • Voicing – typically SAT
  • Daryl Coley

  • Gospel singers close gap between performers and listeners
  • Essence of the music is participation
  • Horace Boyer ‘A gospel composition only begins to have real life when it enters the performance medium.’

Rhythm

  • Precision in gospel music or African musical forms is not the most important priority
  • Tempo – free style, slow, moderate, fast
  • Phrasing – articulation, dynamics, words

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Cultural

  • Audience participation
  • Full body participation
  • African retentions

Religious

  • Proclamation of the Word
  • Influence of the Holy Spirit
  • Emphasis on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ

Black Church

Center of social discourse

Citadel of hope against the unfulfilled promises of Emancipation

Cocoon of insulation that softened impact of America’s hypocrisy regarding freedom

Proving ground for development of black leadership and literacy training

Personal and social development

Emergence of black preacher as central figure in community

  • 1910s – 1920s massive migration of southern (poor) blacks to the north looking for better lives
  • They brought spiritual values with them that transformed institutional form of black Christianity: evident in the beliefs and practices of Pentecostal, Holiness & Sanctified churches
  • Brought desire to hear impassioned preaching; spontaneous & participatory worship; space in services for interjections of ‘praise the Lord’ etc; moaning & other vocalizations of southern black worship

  • Represents a return to distinctly African American religious values after a period in which many northern Black aspired to a white middle-class religiosity
  • Northern free blacks established the first formal black congregations in the late 18th century, founding the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia in 1816
  • Early services spontaneous, similar to invisible churches of the south
  • Late 19th c. many viewed these as backwards & unsophisticated
  • Began to emulate religious music of white Protestants

  • Two distinct churches developed

those emulating white churches (class)

those distinctly African in nature, drew strength from the culture (mass)

Two Types of Churches

Mass

- originally described as low income/low status (by Western standards)

-rhythmic, emotional music

- enthusiastic services, no hang-ups

- longer services

- more music

Class

- upper income/ higher status

- worshippers use value system of dominant society

- imitates ‘best’ in white church life

- less music

-Shorter services (including sermons)

- often rejects black music (gospel too worldly, spiritual as anthem = form of self-rejection)

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3 major support systems in Black church worship

Preaching

Praying

Music

Black Preaching/Black Praying

  • More auditory than literary – aimed at ear
  • Has a musical quality - rhythm, pace & often melody
  • Pastor Nathan Simmons

Pentecostal/Holiness Churches

  • Azusa Street Revival
  • Emphasis on speaking in tongues – glossolalia
  • speaking in tongues
  • Encouraged use of musical instruments – incorporated instruments of the ‘world’ such as guitar, piano, saxophone, organ
  • Integrated ragtime, jazz, blues motifs and melodies in praise of God
  • Patti LaBelle

  • Shouts, rhythmic chanting, foot stomps, preaching, singing, hand claps, personal participation = intense emotional experiences
  • Wedding
  • Songs heavily laced with or based on call-and-response
  • Soldier In The Army of the Lord
  • Places of refuge that filled emptiness in black lives & raised people out of despair