GOSPEL

Gospel is a sacred music made by African-Americans who moved from the rural South to urban cities across the U.S. at the beginning of the 20th century. With them they brought their culture, their history, their dreams of change and of a better life, and a music that reflected all of this and so provided solid foundations for the uprooted families.

Gospel is both a repertoire of songs and a style of singing. It can be created from an existing hymn or spiritual by adding certain formulaic characteristics, or it may be created afresh. Although early composers used written scores, gospel has always been an aural and oral process, and improvisation has featured very prominently. A dramatic, expressive music, performances are characterised by extremes in volume and a wide range of tempos, often within one piece. Melodic lines are greatly embellished, often melismatically (several notes to one syllable). “Call-and-response,” central to most African-American music, is another feature—a dialogue that takes place between voice and instrument, soloist and choir, and performer and audience. Natural syncopation occurs through use of polyrhythms (several rhythms used simultaneously). Rhythmic vitality is essential and is created instrumen-tally, vocally, and through use of the body as an instrument, for example, clapping and foot-stomping.

A male gospel choir in a lively performance at the Jefferson County Courthouse in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1996.

EXPLORING THE ROOTS

Gospel’s roots can be traced to American plantations during the 18th and 19th centuries, in the “negro spiritual”—the songs of black slaves who fused the church hymns of their masters, and the “hell-fire” drama of Protestant preachers, with African rhythms and traditions. A heady mix developed, combining congregational singing with distinctive call-and-response vocal patterns, slow-metered Protestant hymns, and secular music forms such as the blues. More traditional forms of gospel have remained a major force in American church music and have gained ground throughout Europe, but gospel has also crossed over and enriched all kinds of other modern music styles. In addition, it has proved a major training ground for countless singers, from Aretha FRANKLIN to Whitney HOUSTON.

CHURCH ROOTS

Fertile soil for the development of gospel music came from the black Pentecostal church, which formed at the start of the 20th century and blended a white spiritualism with the spontaneous worship practices of southern African-Americans. Instruments were added freely to simple folk spirituals, and congregational singing became a central feature of worship. Possession by spirits was a prominent theme, and dealing with this involved “speaking in tongues” or shouting out loud. The long services were emotionally charged and the music was highly improvised, with much use made of call-and-response.

Although most African-American Baptists virtually ignored the Pentecostal movement, they too made their own contribution to gospel music, creating a kind of “moaning” hymn that allowed for improvisation but kept the tempo at a slower pace—“Amazing Grace” being a very well-known example. In 1921, the National Baptist Convention, a large organised group of black Christians, published Gospel Pearls, a collection of over 160 popular sacred songs, and embraced gospel music as a viable genre for the church.

Although he was not the first to write gospel tunes, most critics assign a key role in the development of gospel to composer, pianist, and arranger Thomas Andrew DORSEY (1899–1993). Dorsey did much to create a golden age of gospel during the 1930s and is even credited with using the term “gospel” as a single word to describe the music. He also pioneered the concept of selling gospel sheet music. Dorsey’s contributions are particularly significant because he synthe-sised the diverse styles of the black churches with that of the blues. Unable to secure publishers for his work, and often unwelcome in the church because of his heavy jazz and blues influences, Dorsey ploughed on with a perseverance that did much to pave the way for future generations. His compositions were organised around the call-and-response structure, with melodies and harmonies based on blues scales and piano accompaniments in the boogie-woogie and ragtime traditions reminiscent of his days accompanying the great blues singer Ma RAINEY. His influence was so great that, during the 1940s and 1950s, all new gospel songs were referred to as “Dorseys.” A prolific composer (he wrote over 500 gospel songs), Dorsey had a huge impact on the careers of several other greats of this era, including Mahalia JACKSON, Roberta Martin, Sally Martin, and Kenneth Morris.

DORSEY’s LEGACY

Another important contributor to gospel music was Kenneth Morris. Born in 1917, he began taking piano lessons as a grammar school student, and by age 13 was playing impromptu concerts with other teenage boys. By age 16, Morris was studying at the Manhattan Conservatory of Music and was well on his way to becoming an established jazz musician, although illness eventually prevented an active career in jazz. For six years, Morris worked as an arranger for the Chicago publisher Lillian M. Bowles, and in 1940 he founded with Sally Martin the Martin and Morris Music Company in Chicago. Martin and Morris published most of the significant gospel music during another golden era for the genre—from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s—and remains the oldest continuously operating African-American gospel music publisher in the U.S. Morris’s achievements did not end there. It was he who first introduced the Hammond organ into church music in 1939 and into recordings some years later, and it is still one of the most important instruments of the church today. Morris died in 1988. Morris’s introduction of the Hammond organ onto a gospel recording was for Mahalia Jackson’s “Move on Up a Little Higher,” the first gospel number to sell a million copies. Jackson has become a gospel icon and a major influence on artists such as Aretha Franklin. She toured with Dorsey during the 1930s and 1940s, went on to work with Duke ELLINGTON, and won over a huge white audience.

Roberta Martin (1907–69) defined an entire musical era for gospel, composing and arranging songs that blended the Baptist “moan,” the syncopation associated with the Pentecostal church, a certain classical flavour, and the popular Dorsey blues influence. Her sound was achieved through combining male and female vocal timbres, a marked departure from the typical all-male sound of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Martin also served as mentor for the next truly great gospel figure, the Rev. James CLEVELAND.

THE GOSPEL CHOIR

The earlier decades of gospel tended to feature small ensembles, particularly the male quartet and solo singers, but by the 1960s a dramatic growth of gospel choirs was taking place. Although Dorsey organised the first gospel choir in the 1930s, James Cleveland took it to new heights, involving hundreds of young people in the gospel movement. Cleveland revolutionised the gospel sound through inspired use of jazz-style piano and soulful organ riffs, although secular dance rhythms never fully infiltrated his style, which was essentially a lush, heavily accented choral sound. A highly unselfish and caring man, Cleveland also did much to develop the career of aspiring singers. His most famous prodigy was Aretha Franklin, whom Cleveland introduced to the world in 1973 with the Grammy-winning “Amazing Grace.” By this time he had also created another kind of training opportunity for gospel performers—the Gospel Music Workshop of America. This annual gathering of gospel musicians and aficionados, founded in 1968, was designed to provide both training and support and remains highly influential today.

In 1969, gospel music made the next logical transition when Edwin Hawkins and a small group of family and friends recorded “Oh Happy Day.” Taking the song’s text from a hymn of the same name, Hawkins created a totally contemporary sound by using the dance beats of popular chart music. The original recording was a low-budget project, intended simply to finance a trip to a youth convention in Washington, D.C. Five hundred copies were made and these were sold by hand. By chance, a copy ended up with a local underground radio station. Community support was overwhelming and the song went on to capture the interest of Buddah Records. “Oh Happy Day” became a smash gospel and pop hit, selling over a million copies and appearing on Billboard magazine’s Top 40 list in the No. 1 slot. With this, the gospel world had truly entered the “crossover” market and began to sell its songs to a much wider public.

Around the same time, white Pentecostal evangelists discovered gifted singer-songwriter Andrae Crouch, who signed with the religious label, Light Records. Crouch’s style was a blend of traditional gospel and romantic soul ballad—as demonstrated on his biggest hits, “I Don’t Know Why Jesus Loves Me” and “Through It All.” Crouch continued to stretch the boundaries of acceptable church music by using jazz and popular music harmonies, instrumentations, and rhythms, and he attracted the youthful crossover market by avoiding direct references to God or Jesus.

Crouch enjoyed a brilliant career which, along the way, took in a large number of classic songs and albums, phenomenal record sales, Grammy awards, movie score contributions for hits such as The Lion King and Free Willy, and an Academy Award nomination. He collaborated closely with a wide range of artists, including Elvis PRESLEY, Michael JACKSON, Quincy JONES, and MADONNA.

Both Hawkins and Crouch set the standards for a generation of performers and arrangers who melded popular music techniques with the traditional sounds of African-American worship. There has been a continuous stream of musicians in this vein, including The Clark Sisters, Walter Hawkins, Sandra Crouch, Vanessa Bell Armstrong, Daryl Coley, and Douglas Miller. Many of these new musicians broadened the genre even further by adding sounds normally associated with classical music techniques—Richard Smallwood is a perfect example of this approach. Smallwood studied piano at Howard University in Washington, D.C, and then went on to huge album success in the gospel world. Having formed the Richard Smallwood Singers in the late 1970s, he named his first album after the group and this went on to spend 87 weeks on the Billboard Gospel Album Chart. A string of Grammy-nominated projects followed and Smallwood spent the 1980s and 1990s touring the world, collecting various honours, and bringing together top musicians from the gospel, classical, and popular music fields.

SPIRITUAL VERSUS SECULAR

As more gospel artists captured the attention of crossover markets, gospel began to move away from its central relationship with the church and a new brand of gospel emerged. This music is rarely performed in the church because of its strong secular overtones. The gospel that is still performed in churches continues to feature choirs and small vocal ensembles accompanied by piano, Hammond organ, drums, guitar, and bass. New gospel embraces groups such as Take 6, a Christian vocal jazz ensemble and winner of seven Grammys, and BeBe & CeCe Winans, a brother and sister duo who made history by creating the first album to be marketed by both sacred and secular music companies at the same time.

New gospel also boasts a whole host of instrumental musicians—such as jazz pianist Ben Tankard— who have adapted the gospel style to suit their specific instruments.

It seems that gospel will continue to influence and be influenced by a wide variety of secular music trends for many years to come.

Donna M. Cox