Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Marovich
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
Tipping Points ◽  
Radio Broadcast ◽  
Contemporary Gospel

This book examines the development of gospel music in Chicago during its first five decades, from pioneers such as Thomas A. Dorsey and Sallie Martin to the start of the contemporary gospel era of the 1970s. It chronicles some of the historic tipping points that helped establish what is known today as gospel music, all of them occurring in Chicago, including Arizona Dranes's 1926 recording of “My Soul Is a Witness for My Lord”; the debut of the First Church of Deliverance radio broadcast in 1935; the founding of Martin and Morris Music Studio in 1939; and the 1947 release of Mahalia Jackson's best-selling record “Move on Up a Little Higher.” The book also shows how the gospel music industry grew out of the necessity for entrepreneurship among African American migrants. Finally, it considers how gospel music as developed in Chicago transcended denominational boundaries, along with the contributions of various church denominations to the development of gospel.

Singing back to the Bard: A conversation on Desdemona with Rokia Traoré

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Rapetti
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Nobel Laureate ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Artistic Director

Rokia Traoré is a Malian singer, guitarist and composer, known worldwide for her artistic syncretism and political activism. Her distinctive style blends elements of traditional Malian music with blues, folk and rock to address contemporary geopolitical and humanitarian issues. She is the artistic director of Fondation Passerelle, a non-profit organization she founded in 2006 to support young African singers and musicians by offering them high-quality professional training and work opportunities in the music industry. In this interview, she discusses her experience as songwriter and performer in Desdemona (2012), a cross-cultural theatre adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello staged by American director Peter Sellars, with texts by African American Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, sharing some intimate memories and elaborating freely on the role of performers and the importance of focused listening in live stage productions.

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.

scholarly journals Religiosity versus Spirituality in the Contemporary Nigerian Gospel Music

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-132
Author(s):  
Floribert Patrick Calvain Endong
Keyword(s):  
Music Industry ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Musical Cultures ◽  
Sex Scandals ◽  
Religious Landscape ◽  
Good Number

Abstract There have been remarkable (r)evolutions in the Nigerian gospel music industry for the past decades. These revolutions have led to the emergence and survival of various modern and controversial musical cultures/traditions, modes and performances including worldliness and paganism in the industry. In view of these relatively nefarious musical cultures, a good number of scholars and observers tend to arguably redefine and (re)brand Christian communication in general and Nigerian gospel music in particular. It is in following this premise that this paper examines the phenomenon of religiosity and worldliness in the Nigerian gospel music industry. Based on observations and secondary data (literary sources), the paper argues that the Nigerian gospel music industry is just a vivid reflection of the country’s gloomy socio-religious landscape, characterized by the emergence/prevalence of fake ministers and various ubiquitous instrumentalities that perpetrate spiritual bareness in the country. Aspects of religiosity observed in some Nigerian gospel songs include controversial rhythms, imitations/adaptations of worldly songs, lyrical emphasis on prosperity (materialism, fame and earthly glories) at the detriment of spirituality/salvation, gospel artists being associated with sex scandals and occult practices.

Mediating Culture

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martijn Oosterbaan
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
Electronic Media ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Life Conditions ◽  
The People ◽  
Potential Gain ◽  
The Face

This chapter seeks to show that Pentecostal musicians struggle with both the potential gain and loss of charisma owing to the current mergers between P/e and electronic media, by drawing from the case of a renowned gospel singer, Elaine Martins. Not only have media technologies transformed and expanded the “reproduction of charisma,” but they have also generated controversies about the sincerity of the performers as converts and evangelists. To defend themselves in the face of the commercialization of the gospel music industry, singers integrate prayers and testimonies into their recordings and performances. This chapter thus underscores the need to take seriously the spiritual aesthetic of popular music and its technological (re)mediation, as well as the structural life conditions and cultural backgrounds of the people involved, in understanding the localization and globalization (what some call the “glocalization”) of P/e in settings such as Brazil.

Black Music USA: From African to African American Music

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Robert Sacré
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black People ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
American Music ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Deep South ◽  
African American Music ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primitive Forms ◽  
Work Songs

This chapter discusses the history of African American Music. Many of the roots of black American music lie in Africa more than four hundred years ago at the start of the slave trade. It is essential to realize that the importance given to music and dance in Africa was reflected among black people in America in the songs they sang, in their dancing, and at their folk gatherings. As such, every aspect of jazz, blues, and gospel music is African to some degree. Work songs and the related prison songs are precursors of the blues. One can assume that primitive forms of pre-blues appeared around 1885, mostly in the Deep South and predominantly in the state of Mississippi. However, it was several more years before the famous AAB twelve-bar structure appeared, and when it did, one of its leading practitioners was Charley Patton.

scholarly journals “At This Age, This Is Who I Am”: CeCe Winans, Exilic Consciousness, and the American Popular Music Star System

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 475-485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela M. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
The Self ◽  
Star System ◽  
Christian Women ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
American Popular Music

Abstract My paper addresses the intersections of the American popular music star system, Black female Gospel singers, Gospel Music, and the exilic consciousness of the Sanctified Church with special attention to life and music of Gospelwoman Priscilla Marie “CeCe” Winans Love. I argue that CeCe Winans and the marketing campaign for Winans’ album Let Them Fall in Love, is indicative of the encroachment of American popular music’s star system into self-elected “exiled” Gospel Music and into the lives of “exiled” Gospelwomen. Gospelwomen are 20th and 21st century urban African American Protestant Christian women who are paid for singing Gospel Music and who have recorded at least one Gospel album for national distribution. The self-elected exile of Gospelwomen refers to their decision to live a life based on the values of the Kingdom of God while encountering and negotiating opposing values in American popular culture. Gospelwomen and Gospel Music are impacted by the demands of stardom in America’s celebrity culture which includes achieved success and branding. Gospelwomen negotiate these components of stardom molding them into mechanisms that conform to their beliefs and needs.

A taxonomy of musical gesture in African American gospel music

Popular Music ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Legg
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Music Research ◽  
Conventional Notation ◽  
Analytical Research ◽  
Musical Gesture ◽  
And Performance

AbstractAfrican American gospel music seems without obvious parallel as a musical and social phenomenon of the twentieth century. It is a powerful musical and ‘spiritual’ expression that is to a larger extent defined by the musical style, vocal techniques and performance practices of one of its central figures: the gospel singer. Although these originally African American gospel vocal techniques and practices have now also significantly influenced the development of contemporary popular music and the broader gospel vocal style, the specific terminology used to describe them lacks precise definition, and also highlights the failure of conventional notation in successfully capturing or representing them.This article seeks then to firstly define and annotate some of the key descriptive terms commonly applied to African American gospel singing techniques in order that greater consistency and clarity can be achieved in relation to their usage within contemporary popular music research. Secondly, it will also introduce an analytical notational system, accompanied by a series of annotated musical transcriptions, that forms the basis of the author's taxonomy of musical gesture for African American gospel music, and which may provide a framework for comparative analytical research within the field of gospel-inspired contemporary popular music.

’Garde ici et ’garde lá-bas

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jared Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Native American ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Dance Music ◽  
The Core ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores the history of the Creole accordion. Black Creoles in Louisiana have created their own, distinctive accordion music adapted from French, Native American, and African cultures. While Creole musicians in the early twentieth century were often hired for Cajun dances, where they played Cajun dance music, at their own gatherings they played a uniquely Creole repertoire that drew from the African American blues—a repertoire later developed by accordionists such Clifton Chenier and Boozoo Chavis. Zydeco, as this music eventually was labeled, has become a symbol of Louisiana Creole culture. It is argued that despite the pressure on modern zydeco bands to adapt to the demands of the music industry, the traditional accordion and rubboard remain the core instruments, and zydeco accordionists keep playing in a distinctively Creole style.

“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.

scholarly journals Musical Tradition and Cultural Vision in Langston Hughes’s Poetry

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 41-45
Author(s):  
Lekha Nath Dhakal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
American Music ◽  
Langston Hughes ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
Musical Tradition

In American music, Langston Hughes is one of the literary figures that hold a place similar to the aforementioned luminaries. In the literary field, Hughes is respected as one of the most important figures of the twentieth century. With the rise of African American Studies as an academic field in the 1970s, his life, writing, and influence has received frequent attention. What has not been documented in more specific terms is his importance to America’s musical culture in the twentieth century. Whether directly or indirectly, Langston Hughes has been a fixture in American musical culture, both popular and concert music, since the 1920s. In addition to his personal affinity for blues, jazz and other specifically African American musical forms such as gospel music, his vast contribution to American music specifically and American music culture in a broader sense can be separated into four general categories.

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