scholarly journals “I Love It When You Play that Holy Ghost Chord”: Sounding Sacramentality in the Black Gospel Tradition

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 452
Author(s):  
Braxton D. Shelley
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Spiritual Power ◽  
Baptist Church ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Creative Power ◽  
Religious Feeling ◽  
Christian Congregations ◽  
Musical Accompaniment

This essay argues that the distinctive aesthetic practices of many African American Christian congregations, indexed by the phrase “the Black gospel tradition”, are shaped by a sacramentality of sound. I contend that the role music routinely plays in the experience of the holy uncovers sanctity in the sound itself, enabling it to function as a medium of interworldly exchange. As divine power takes an audible form, the faith that “comes by hearing” is confirmed by religious feeling—both individual and collective. This sacramentality of sound is buttressed by beliefs about the enduring efficacy of divine speech, convictions that motivate the intensive character of gospel’s songs, sermons, and shouts. The essay begins with a worship service from Chicago, Illinois’ Greater Harvest Missionary Baptist Church, an occasion in which the musical accompaniment for holy dancing brought sound’s sacramental function into particularly clear relief. In the essay’s second section, I turn to the live recording of Richard Smallwood’s “Hebrews 11”, a recording that accents the creative power of both divine speech and faithful utterances, showing how reverence for “the word of God” inspires the veneration of musical sound. In the article’s final move, I show how both of the aforementioned performances articulate a sacramental theology of sound—the conviction that sound’s invisible force brings spiritual power to bear on the material world.

Race in Country Music Scholarship

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia Carter Mather
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Southern Music ◽  
Construction Of Whiteness ◽  
British Culture

This chapter reviews how country music scholarship deals with race. It then suggests how scholarship might move forward toward a more critical stance. While evidence points toward African American innovation at the origins of country, survey histories of country music trace the music’s origins to British culture in Appalachia. Revisionist scholarship attempts to uncover black contributions in most periods of country’s history. Its most common topics are the construction of whiteness by the country music industry and the segregation of southern music in the 1920s into “race” and “hillbilly” marketing categories. This chapter ends by suggesting that country scholarship focus on race as a chief concern of the field, complicate its view of segregation, and give more attention to musical sound.

“The Evidence of Things Not Seen”

2021 ◽  
pp. 159-222
Author(s):  
Braxton D. Shelley
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Dimension ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Spiritual Power ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Presence Of God

This chapter argues that the gospel tradition is animated by an incarnational approach to text: a pervasive belief that sacred words hold together visible and invisible realms, occasioning traffic between the two. The chapter begins with analyses of Smallwood’s “Hebrews 11” (2014) and “His Mercy Endureth Forever” (1992), two songs whose striking relationship with their scriptural source reveals the agency that believers attribute to hallowed verse. These songs epitomize gospel’s conviction about the transformative power of holy words, read, spoken, and sung, a transcendent principle that motivates the practice of tuning up. As it incarnates time, tuning up activates the otherworldly intensity of these interworldly texts. As they are iterated and intensified the gospel song’s lyrics become something more—the living word of God. The second section of this develops a fuller picture of the textual sources that gospel regards as sacred, formulations that mediate between worlds, offering believers specific windows through which to experience the eternal. The chapter demonstrates that gospel’s views about the efficacy of words ultimately derive from a preoccupation with the name of Jesus—an enduring belief that spiritual power is unleashed when that name is spoken. Gospel vamps use this pivotal utterance to re-incarnate Jesus, proclaiming—again and again—that Jesus is the living word of God. But this incarnation has two trajectories: as gospel texts commingle live performances and a host of other scriptural scenes, they also draw believers into the presence of God, through the spiritual realm—the spatial dimension of kairos.

In Another Voice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marian Wilson Kimber
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Women Composers ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Racial Stereotypes ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Musical Settings ◽  
Paul Laurence Dunbar ◽  
Children's Songs ◽  
Musical Accompaniment

Women confirmed their own more highly cultured positions through recitation of African American dialect, particularly the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, or “child dialect,” sometimes with musical accompaniment. Many women incorporated Dunbar’s dialect poems into their repertoires, texts that also inspired settings for speaker and piano by women composers. However white women’s imitations of African American dialect perpetuated racial stereotypes such as that of the Mammy, even while their musical settings negated the text’s origins. Child dialect allowed child imitators to express comedic and rebellious sentiments without transgressing feminine social boundaries. The child-like persona cultivated by diseuse Kitty Cheatham facilitated her eclectic programming of children’s songs, nursery rhymes, and European art music alongside spirituals and African-American dialect texts.

“Patience, Sincerity, and Consistency”: Fred Anderson’s Musical and Social Practices

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Steinbeck
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Eightieth Birthday ◽  
The Social ◽  
Improvised Music ◽  
Social Realm ◽  
African American Artists

The August 19, 2009 symposium held in honor of Chicago tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson, and the eightieth-birthday concert that took place the following evening, provided tangible representations of the acclaim and appreciation received by Anderson in his last years. Though Anderson was best known for his work as a performer, bandleader, and “gray eminence” on the international jazz and improvised-music scene, he was equally successful in the social realm as an educator, a community builder, and—critically—the steward of the Velvet Lounge nightclub, which he owned and operated from 1982 to 2010. In this article, I examine Anderson’s musical and social practices, demonstrating how he constructed inclusive, supportive spaces for multiple personal expression via musical sound and social interaction. I also consider the relationships between Anderson’s efforts and the goals of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the African American artists’ collective that Anderson was affiliated with for more than four decades. The “data set” for this investigation includes the proceedings of the above-mentioned symposium, my own interviews with Anderson, and analyses of his compositions, performances, and music-theoretical discoveries.

Church Is Where “I Acquired My Singing Tactics”

2018 ◽  
pp. 25-32
Author(s):  
Vic Hobson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Baptist Church ◽  
Chromatic Harmony ◽  
Mount Zion

This chapter explores the influence of singing in Mount Zion Baptist Church on Armstrong’s development as a musician.Although we do not know exactly what Armstrong sang at his church there are transcriptions of the singing in New Hope Baptist Church just across the Mississippi River in Gretna. The transcriptions reveal a similar blues influenced tonality to the street songs and barbershop cadences sung elsewhere in New Orleans. This chapter explores the pentatonic tendency of melody in African American song; whereas the supporting lines tend to contain chromatic intervals and give rise to chromatic harmony.

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.

When Two Churches Became One

2011 ◽  
Vol 108 (4) ◽  
pp. 545-556
Author(s):  
Lincoln Bingham
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Baptist Church ◽  
Predominately White ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
National Media

On August 23, 2009, the predominately white Shively Heights Baptist Church and the predominately African American St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church merged to form St. Paul Baptist Church @ Shively Heights. The merger of the two Louisville, Kentucky, congregations garnered much local and national media attention. “Why?”, “How?”, and “Will it work?” were oft-asked questions. In this article, an attempt to answer these questions is made.

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