From Hipster to Hillbilly: Death, Bluegrass, and Gospel According to David Crowder

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (03) ◽  
pp. 338-358
Author(s):  
JOSHUA KALIN BUSMAN
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Music ◽  
Worship Music ◽  
Widespread Adoption ◽  
Praise And Worship ◽  
American Churches ◽  
Multiple Discourses

AbstractEven with the widespread adoption of rock-styled “praise and worship” music in American churches, bluegrass and gospel musics still serve as potent musical signifiers, especially among the white southern evangelicals comprising praise and worship's primary demographic. Drawing repertoire and influence from Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, and Bill Gaither, evangelical artist David Crowder uses strategic musical references to establish his own sense of “hillbilly” religiosity but often deploys these references in ways that align him with a “hipster” community of young musicians and music fans. In this paper, I demonstrate the ways that strategic references to bluegrass and gospel music allow Crowder to situate himself within these multiple discourses of evangelical authenticity.

Religion and Race in American Music

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Stowe
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
American Music ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Worship Music ◽  
Religious Music ◽  
European Americans ◽  
Musical Adaptations ◽  
Group Identities

Religious music functions both to create group identities and to dissolve social boundaries. Historically, American music has been characterized by racial and religious crossover. While many ethnic groups have participated in constituting American music, the most seminal crossovers have occurred between African and European Americans. Jazz was shaped largely by the interactions of Jews and African Americans. Gospel music developed from the interaction of vernacular slave spirituals, Protestant hymns, and the secular blues. Christian hymns have been thoroughly indigenized by many Native American groups. Compared to Buddhists and Jews, American Hindus and Muslims have made few musical adaptations of their worship music, but their music has been widely sampled in American popular styles. In recent decades, mainline Protestant hymnals have come to reflect the deeply multicultural reality of American sacred song.

“Someday, Somewhere”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Marovich
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
Tipping Point ◽  
African American Churches ◽  
American Churches

This chapter examines the roles played by Thomas A. Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, Sallie Martin, Theodore R. Frye, and Magnolia Lewis Butts in the development of gospel music in Chicago. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Dorsey, Jackson, Martin, Frye, and Butts formed an informal nexus that spread the new gospel songs and gospel music style throughout Chicago and, ultimately, across the country. Dorsey was a versatile pianist, composer, arranger, singer, and bandleader who helped incorporate jazz and blues styles into gospel. He met Jackson around 1928 and offered her to demonstrate his songs. Martin, another Dorsey acquaintance, helped the struggling songwriter reap the financial and adulatory benefits of gospel music. This chapter provides a background on Dorsey, Jackson, Martin, Frye, and Butts and how they got involved in gospel music in Chicago. It also discusses the 1930 National Baptist Convention, the tipping point for Dorsey's gospel songwriting career as well as the commencement of a gradual acceptance of gospel music by African American churches.

The Ethiopian and Eritrean Evangelical Diaspora of Montreal

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-97
Author(s):  
Hugo Ferran
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Music ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Evangelical Church ◽  
Worship Music ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Gospel Message

The Ammanuel Montreal Evangelical Church (AMEC) is composed of over 150 members of Ethiopian and Eritrean origin. Through the examination of their musical practices, this article analyzes how music is involved in the construction and expression of religious identities in the context of migration. It appears that in borrowing worship music widespread in Ethiopia and in its diaspora, the faithful highlight the “Ethiopianness” of the group, at the expense of the minority Eritrean identity. The author then reveals that each musical parameter conveys different identity facets. If the universality of the Gospel message is expressed through dance and lyrics, the repertoire and its instrumentarium convey the “Ethiopianness” of the congregation, while the rhythms refer to a multi-ethnic Ethiopian imaginary. As for the local identity (Montreal) of the congregation, it is represented by the combination of several hymns borrowed from the stars of Ethiopian Gospel music. Finally, the paper highlights some musical ambivalences of the faithful who, in the context of migration, feel torn between several cultures.

The Gospel Caravan

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Marovich
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mass Consumption ◽  
African American Churches ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
American Churches ◽  
Record Company

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.

Sweeping through the City

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Marovich
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
The Political ◽  
Baptist Church ◽  
New Members ◽  
African American Churches ◽  
Black Sacred Music ◽  
The City ◽  
American Churches

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.

“My Worship Has Been Hijacked”

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-38
Author(s):  
Melanie C. Ross
Keyword(s):  
Historical Research ◽  
Charismatic Movement ◽  
Worship Music ◽  
Evangelical Churches ◽  
Praise And Worship

Chapter 1 combines historical research with autoethnographic narrative to contextualize the dramatic musical shifts that have taken place in evangelicalism over the last four decades. In the 1980s and 1990s, “praise and worship” music—a genre with roots in the Pentecostal and charismatic movement—began to enter the evangelical mainstream. Evangelical churches struggled with how to negotiate the ethos and aesthetics of these new songs into their services, leading to a period that many commentators dubbed the “worship wars.” Subsequent developments, including the formation of Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI), a concerted push by secular distributors to sell worship music to churches, and the rise of new kind of performer (the “celebrity worship leader”), exacerbated internal congregational tensions and debates.

scholarly journals “It’s Your Breath in Our Lungs”: Sean Feucht’s Praise and Worship Music Protests and the Theological Problem of Pandemic Response in the U.S.

Religions ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Adam A. Perez
Keyword(s):  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Spiritual Power ◽  
Worship Music ◽  
The Social ◽  
Government Mandates ◽  
Congregational Singing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Praise And Worship ◽  
Historical Resources ◽  
The U.S

In response to U.S. government restrictions imposed as part of a nationwide response to the COVID-19 pandemic, charismatic worship leader Sean Feucht began a series of worship concerts. Feucht positioned these protests as expressions of Christian religious freedom in opposition to mandated church closings and a perceived double-standard regarding the large gatherings of protesters over police violence against Black and Brown persons. Government restrictions challenged the sine qua non liturgical act of encounter with God for evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Charismatics: congregational singing in Praise and Worship. However, as Feucht’s itinerant worship concerts traversed urban spaces across the U.S. to protest these restrictions, the events gained a double valence. Feucht and event attendees sought to channel God’s power through musical worship to overturn government mandates and, along the way, they invoked longstanding social and racial prejudices toward urban spaces. In this essay, I argue that Feucht’s events reveal complex theological motivations that weave together liturgical-theological, social, and political concerns. Deciphering this complex tapestry requires a review of both the history of evangelical engagement with urban spaces and the theological history of Praise and Worship. Together, these two sets of historical resources generate a useful frame for considering how Feucht, as a charismatic musical worship leader, attempts to wield spiritual power through musical praise to change political situations and the social conditions.

Noise and Silence in Rwanda’s Postgenocide Religious Soundscape

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 35-64
Author(s):  
Andrea Mariko Grant
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Worship Music ◽  
Pentecostal Churches ◽  
Praise And Worship

AbstractThis article explores conflicts around noise and silence in Rwanda’s postgenocide religious soundscape. After the genocide, new Pentecostal (or abarokore) churches grew rapidly in the country and offered up noise and a specific understanding of praise and worship music (guhimbaza Imana) as important ways to enact healing. However, Catholics emphasised silence and viewed the new Pentecostal churches as distracting interlopers. Far from being trivial differences, I argue that these conflicts around sound hint at wider divides in Rwandan society and a worrying new convergence between religious and ethnic identity. Focusing on aural conflicts between Christian denominations can therefore help us gain a better sense of the limits of Pentecostal conversion. Instead of assuming that Pentecostals are necessarily ‘noisy’, I suggest we pay closer attention to the ways in which they may also cultivate silence, and how this relates to wider power structures.

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