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Chapter 4 discusses how the gospel message has been transmitted in Evangelical churches and communities, which the chapter defines as churches that emphasize the unmediated authority of the Bible, emphasize the need for a personal experience of conversion, and have highly voluntary forms of organization. The chapter shows that the gospel has been affirmed in these communities in formal doctrinal statements; through varied forms of Evangelical worship, including evangelistic preaching and the use of traditional hymns Gospel music, and contemporary Christian music; and through training media such as tracts and video presentations of the basic Christian message.

Lee Breuer's The Gospel at Colonus foregrounds the themes found in Oedipus at Colonus, of reconciliation and integration, and tests them against America's racially divided society. The analyses in this chapter concentrate on various comparisons between Gospel and its Greek antecedent: on the representation of Oedipus, on descriptions of time and change, on the inconcinnity between the Christian and the Greek worldviews, and on the notion of place. The chapter shows that Gospel reworks the exacting bleakness of the Greek play in the service of a vision of a racially integrated American polity. Its utopian politics, however, may be compromised by its other allegiances, including its commitment to the theatrical roots of tragedy. To pursue this tension, the play is read in relation to the traditions of gospel music, other black theatre, and the American avant-garde.

The American multiracial church has adopted black gospel music as the ideal music for diversification. Black musical styles, especially gospel music, are the most prevalent in discussion and the most pervasive in practice. Even more, African Americans are universally believed to be superior, “soulful” worshippers such that by virtue of skin color—even before people hear them sing—African Americans are imbued with authority on worship. This positive stigma of African Americans in worship is not only a persistent belief, it effectively structures the vision and programming of all multiracial churches—regardless of their likelihood of ever attracting any African Americans. The irony of black worship performance is that when African Americans are on the platform, they are encouraged to “sing like black folks,” but when they are in the pews they are encouraged to suppress themselves and fit in. The chapter accounts for notions of black gospel singing, provides a history of gospel music, and explains the centrality of gospel to black identity. The chapter forcefully cautions against racial essentialism and argues against absolutizing supposed racial-ethnic distinctions—even seemingly complementary ones—that crystallize notions of difference that extend rather than diminish racial divisions.

This chapter examines new Christian literary and musical styles arising in the U.S. Virgin Islands and the eastern Caribbean more generally. The islands’ struggles with colonialism, slavery, freedom, migration, and dependency have provoked a gospel response in drama, music, and preaching. These new expressions depict Jesus as a person of color and the Christian as a radical soldier, a gospel music knight errant armed with Bible, drums, and guitar. A new Christian people’s idiom is emerging at a global crossroads.

The seven years between 1952 and 1959 were an extraordinarily rich period for the Dixie Hummingbirds and also for African American cultural history. African American artists of every kind continued to the forefront of popular entertainment, particularly in the field of music. Although rhythm and blues especially succeeded in the pop mainstream and influenced more popular genres such as rock ‘n’ roll, gospel remained primarily “insider” music, culture bound, and still celebrated mostly within the African American community. Black gospel occasionally did reach multiracial audiences via radio, records, television, and news stories, but throughout the 1950s, the stars of gospel were for the most part stars within the sphere of African American entertainment.

“Ritual inclusion” is the process by which church leaders change worship services to incorporate members of different racial and ethnic groups. Recruiting for visual diversity is a subtle, yet fundamental, imperative in all multiracial churches as leaders make it a priority to recruit for diversity and achieve “conspicuous color” on the platform. Music, then, relates to the overarching structures of congregational life not through the acoustics of music but by encouraging the staffing of visibly diverse people in ministries of worship as volunteers and paid staff. The deliberate exaggeration of visible diversity is not just about bringing “colored bodies” but especially “black bodies” in the performance of “black music.” The priority of appropriating black bodies motivates the most prominent “strategy” for diversification: hiring a black worship leader. Specialized worship teams—especially gospel choirs—also take a privileged role. Diversity in worship comes to mean the presence of authentic performers who are “obviously” different from the majority of attenders, usually based on skin color, hair texture, facial features, and noticeable foreign accents. By accentuating “otherness,” “orientalism,” and “exoticism,” visible difference legitimizes the congregational goal of diversity and affirms a “diverse” congregational identity.

This introductory chapter offers a scholarly glimpse into the world of southern gospel music from both a sacred and secular point of view. Here the author positions himself as both a gospel-music insider and outsider in discussing methods for how this book approaches and understands southern gospel's cultural functions. In addition, this chapter also functions as a primer on southern gospel music. Broadly defined, southern gospel songs fall into four general types. There are songs of celebration, as well as more commonplace toe-tappers and other upbeat feel-good songs; patriotic and political songs; songs of supplication; and songs of surrender. Across all song styles and types, a tension persists between the music's function as an instrument of conversion and as a vehicle of aesthetic satisfaction.

The early 1950s were exciting times for gospel and for African American musical performers of all kinds. Record sales were healthy. Radio stations were spreading the music beyond color lines. Artists like Nat Cole, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Lionel Hampton, and Louis Jordan were enjoying crossover appeal like never before. At the same time, African Americans were gaining power as consumers of entertainment. In 1951, Columbia Records revived their Okeh imprint, a subsidiary that had been dormant for a number of years. Picked to head the new subsidiary, Danny Kessler, in charge of Columbia's fledgling R&B department at the time, would ultimately record gospel as well as R&B sides. Kessler's gospel signings included the R. S. B. Gospel Singers, Brother Rodney, the Bailey Gospel Singers-and most important, the Dixie Hummingbirds.

The book opens by unpacking Mahalia Jackson’s January 20, 1952, appearance on the nationally televised CBS variety show Toast of the Town, hosted by Ed Sullivan. Jackson’s performance of the W. Herbert Brewster gospel song “These Are They” raises a host of issues that situates her and contemporary performers within the black gospel field. The Sullivan appearance carried considerable significance for African Americans, introducing both Jackson and black gospel singing to a national television audience. The latter half of the chapter assesses the attribution of exceptionalism to black vernacular culture and the literature on Jackson and on gospel music, and closes by delineating a field analysis approach that helps identify forms of prestige that gave meaning to the practice of gospel singing after World War II.

This chapter brings together the different facets of southern gospel's surreptitious modernity as developed in the book, consolidating them in the experience of nonheterosexuals in gospel music. For at least a generation, the fact of queer contributions to the music at all levels has operated as an open secret in southern gospel. Fundamentalism's absolute prohibition on homosexuality makes acceptance of their contributions impossible, of course. Nevertheless, the psychodynamic structure of the music invites nonconformists to identify with southern gospel's emphasis on the sojourning soul's solitary struggle to find spiritual peace in this dry and barren land. This chapter examines the gaygospel paradox as a microcosm of fundamentalism's conflict with the postmodern world. Moreover, using a personal voice informed by the author's own complicated queer identification with the music and its culture, this chapter attempts a redemption of the southern gospel sissy.

This chapter examines the contributions of Thomas A. Dorsey and the gospel nexus to the development of gospel music in Chicago during the years 1932–1933. Pilgrim Baptist Church is often cited as the birthplace of gospel music because Dorsey served as its music director. However, it was actually Ebenezer Baptist Church that provided the creative spark that propelled gospel to the forefront of black sacred music. This chapter first discusses the political infighting endured by Ebenezer over two turbulent years before turning to its gospel programs, along with the establishment of the Ebenezer Gospel Chorus and the Pilgrim Gospel Chorus. It then considers the roles played by Dorsey, Theodore R. Frye, and Magnolia Lewis Butts in the advancement of the gospel chorus movement in Chicago; how gospel choruses became a means for African American churches to attract new members and more revenue; and Dorsey's composition of the gospel song “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.” The chapter concludes with a look at the Martin and Frye Quartette, renamed the Roberta Martin Singers.

The years after World War II were glory days for African American gospel as inventive performers started seriously to build on tradition. An overall healthy economy spawned thriving record and radio industries as more slots on the radio dial were allotted to the entire spectrum of black music from jazz to blues to gospel. By the late 1940s, urban radio stations were beginning to introduce programs hosted by and directed to African Americans—although anyone could and did tune in. The Dixie Hummingbirds adapted to new postwar tastes and styles through personnel changes and the maturation of Ira Tucker as a lead singer, songwriter, and arranger.

This chapter examines the continued evolution of the Chicago gospel music in the mid-twentieth century, led by the Good Shepherd Singers, re-christened the Gospel Caravan or simply Caravans. By the 1950s, gospel music had become the predominant sound of the semi-demonstrative, as well as some deliberative, or sermon-centered, African American churches in the urban North. Recognizing the financial upside of gospel music, independent record company owners, religious disk jockeys, and promoters sought to commodify it for mass consumption. This chapter first discusses the performances and recordings of the Caravans, along with members who came and went, before turning to some of the other important figures on the gospel music circuit, including Alex Bradford and his Bradford Specials, the Maceo Woods Singers, the Staple Singers, artists under Vee Jay Records, the Duncanaires, the Little Lucy Smith Singers, Sammy Lewis, and Mahalia Jackson.

No other recording artist has tapped into the reimagined roots of the old, millennial America to the extent Bob Dylan (1941- ) has. He represents something unique: a millionaire purveyor of technologized, capitalist popular culture whose work projects a consistent though often subliminal message of the end of the world. Dylan’s songs are also a prime example of the hybridity of American apocalyptic thought. Dylan has invoked millennium throughout his career, including times when he was seen as a nihilistic radical of the counter-culture. Furthermore, the technologies of recording, radio, television, and other media has meant a broader diffusion of this imagery among the general public than at any previous time in history. This chapter shows that each musical idiom that Dylan has chosen to deliver his message, together with his tendency to mix popular culture imagery with that drawn from the Bible, has deflected and obscured this eschatogical message. The very eclecticism of Dylan’s sources acts to distance him from any single tradition, and his career has seen every possible take on the theme of millennium, from postmodern pastiche to sincere gospel.

Dance culture and the social contexts that shaped Cajun musical traditions through 1950 constitute the primary focus of this study. Cajun musical expression is considered here, in relation to the varied social dynamics acting on the genre, through an analytical lens categorizing musical expression into one of three distinct, but complementary roles within its host community: home music, sung a cappella for pleasure in a domestic setting for friends, family, or personal enjoyment; ritualistic ballad recitations at significant events straddling secular and religious social spheres; and dance music performed at bals de maison (house dances) and later dance halls—a distinctive style that would be exploited commercially in the early 20th century. The contexts surrounding this vernacular American music satisfied the group’s basic needs for self-expression, social interaction, courtship, and entertainment. This chapter concludes that social context is a crucial factor in the Cajun musical equation that ultimately shapes and defines this brand of ethnic cultural expression.

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about gospel music and the ethics of style in Trinidad. This book explores music and its roles in the lives of Full Gospel believers in Trinidad and examines how musical change occurred in the process of creating a dialogue between current gospel music and normative practices within church services. It also considers the role that performance context plays in shaping the various registers of style, a process which then feeds back into the ways that style is configured in ethical terms through the community's discourse.

This chapter traces the religious histories that have shaped the current context within which Full Gospel Trinidadians are negotiating their identity. It parallels the function of an opening invocation, which serves not only to define the present but also the past(s) with which contemporary Trinidadian believers are sharing their present. It also introduces the four principal musical styles circulating in and around the Full Gospel community including gospelypso, North American gospel music, dancehall, and jamoo.

This chapter brings the discussion of the ethics of style full circle. It proposes several ways that musical change and musical practices themselves might be reenvisioned and rethought in light of the ethics of style by offering a close reading of a Baptist church in Point Fortin, Trinidad. It attempts to reconnect the ethics of style to individual congregations to illustrate the important role that these local instantiations of the Full Gospel community fulfill in the Trinidadian gospel music scene.