A Special Kind of Witness

2020 ◽  
pp. 42-64
Author(s):  
Claudrena N. Harold
Keyword(s):  
Special Kind ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Christian Music ◽  
Black Artists ◽  
Jesus Movement ◽  
Major Player ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
Liberal Approach ◽  
Contemporary Gospel

Through a close examination of Andraé Crouch’s musical contributions, as well as his central role in opening the industry’s doors to other black artists, this chapter details how Crouch altered the sonic landscape of contemporary Christian music during the 1970s and 1980s. It also documents his unique relationship with Ralph Carmichael’s Light Records, his underappreciated role in the company’s emergence as a major player in urban contemporary gospel music, and his vital contributions to the praise and worship genre. In accounting for Crouch’s crossover success, the chapter highlights his musical genius, his liberal approach to spiritual practice and religious expression, his unique partnership with Light and Warner Brothers, and his popularity among whites affiliated with the Jesus movement.

When Sunday Comes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudrena N. Harold
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
Christian Music ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Black America ◽  
Black Artists ◽  
Regional Dynamics ◽  
Musical Genres

When Sunday Comes charts the explosive growth of the gospel music industry between 1968 and 1994. It contextualizes the genre’s sonic innovations, theological tensions, and political assertions within the larger framework of the socioeconomic and cultural transformations taking place in black America during the post–civil rights era. Through an examination of such gospel legends as James Cleveland, Andraé Crouch, Shirley Caesar, the Clark Sisters, the Winans, Al Green, and Kirk Franklin, among others, the book explores the ways in which gospel music has provided an outlet for African Americans to express their spiritual, cultural, and regional identities. Organized chronologically, When Sunday Comes pivots around six principal questions: What were the major sonic transformations in gospel music between 1968 and 1994, and to what extent were those transformations reflective of creative shifts within other musical genres, particularly R&B, soul, funk, disco, and hip-hop? In what ways were gospel artists shaped by larger political developments in the United States, i.e., the rise and fall of the Black Power movement as well as the growing influence of the Moral Majority? To what degree were the soundscapes of gospel music reflective of regional dynamics? How did the political economy of the entertainment industry affect gospel artists’ commercial opportunities? And did the end of de jure racial segregation alter black artists’ relationship with the predominantly white contemporary Christian music industry?

scholarly journals Christian rock concerts as a meeting between religion and popular culture

2003 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 36-55
Author(s):  
Andreas Häger
Keyword(s):  
Rock Music ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Evangelical Christianity ◽  
Religious Service ◽  
Christian Music ◽  
Religious Music ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
Christian Rock ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1960S

Different forms of artistic expression play a vital role in religious practices of the most diverse traditions. One very important such expression is music. This paper deals with a contemporary form of religious music, Christian rock. Rock or popular music has been used within Christianity as a means for evangelization and worship since the end of the 1960s. The genre of "contemporary Christian music", or Christian rock, stands by definition with one foot in established institutional (in practicality often evangelical) Christianity, and the other in the commercial rock musicindustry. The subject of this paper is to study how this intermediate position is manifested and negotiated in Christian rock concerts. Such a performance of Christian rock music is here assumed to be both a rock concert and a religious service. The paper will examine how this duality is expressed in practices at Christian rock concerts.

Apostles of Rock: The Splintered World of Contemporary Christian Music

2001 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 500
Author(s):  
Constance B. Schulz ◽  
Jay R. Howard ◽  
John M. Streck
Keyword(s):  
Christian Music ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
Contemporary Christian Music

Regulating Religious Noise: The Council of Vienne, the Mosque Call and Muslim Pilgrimage in the Late Medieval Mediterranean World

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia Remie Constable
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Acoustic Environment ◽  
Crown Of Aragon ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
Call To Prayer

AbstractThis paper examines the issue of religious noise in the later middle ages, in those areas of the western Mediterranean, especially in the Crown of Aragón, where Muslims and Christians lived in close proximity. In particular, it considers the role of the Council of Vienne (1311) in shifting and reflecting contemporary Christian attitudes toward public and audible Muslim religious observance, including the call to prayer (adhān) and local pilgrimage (ziyāra). This article will place the Vienne rulings in a wider context, first discussing the regulation of religious noise until the end of the thirteenth century, then examining data from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As will become evident, although the Council of Vienne did mark a turning point in the Christian effort to control the religious acoustic environment, its legislation was neither as original nor as effective as is often believed. Nevertheless, the Council marked a shift in contemporary thinking about religious noise, signaling increased awareness of noise as a problem and adding authority to prohibitions on public Muslim religious expression. Parallel concerns expressed by both Muslims and Christians about the religious noise and public rituals of minority communities (whether the mosque call, the ringing of bells, or local pilgrimage) demonstrate inter-religious tensions in the Mediterranean World at the turn of the fourteenth century.

Mission Music as a Mode of Intercultural Transmission, Charisma, and Memory in Northern Australia

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Magowan
Keyword(s):  
50Th Anniversary ◽  
Charismatic Leadership ◽  
Christian Music ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Ritual Performance ◽  
Choral Singing ◽  
Ongoing Work ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Musical Mode

This article, focuses on the durability of Methodist “mission music” among the Yolngu, an Australian Indigenous people, and addresses questions of musical transfer between missionaries and Yolngu over fifty years that have shaped their Christian music politics. “Mission music” is marked as a genre by its association with the early missionaries among the Yolngu, their processes of teaching and transmission and its articulation with some aspects of Yolngu ritual performance practices. Today, mission music is performed together with an array of contemporary Christian musics reflecting its ongoing importance as a local, transnational and international currency. Magowan shows how hymnody has persisted for Yolngu as a musical mode of remembering and celebrating the past, illustrated first in early dialogic approaches to music teaching and choral training, and later recaptured in choral performances for the 50th anniversary festival of a Yolngu mission. She argues that “mission music,” in spite of its introduced, non-local origins, has become an experiential, rhythmical and textual sign of the “local” as it is adopted and used by the Yolngu. Choral singing is shown to be a means of embodying mission memories and facilitating local charismatic leadership, in turn, transforming Yolngu-missionary relationships over time. Ongoing work with missionary evangelists and frequent travel to foreign mission fields have also created new arenas for intercultural dialogue, leading to increasing complexity in Yolngu relationships embodied in Christian performance.

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.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document