gospel music

Gospel music may refer either to the religious music that first came out of African-American churches in the 1930's or, more loosely, to both black gospel music and to the religious music composed and sung by white American Southsouthern Christian artists. While the separation between the two styles was never absolute — both drew from the Methodist hymnal and artists in one tradition sometimes sang songs belonging to the other — the sharp division between black and white America, particularly black and white churches, kept the two apart. While those divisions have lessened slightly in the past fifty years, the two traditions are still distinct.In both traditions, some performers, such as Mahalia Jackson have limited themselves to appearing in religious contexts only, while others, such as The Golden Gate Quartetthe Golden Gate Quartet and Clara Ward, have performed gospel music in secular settings, even night clubs. Many performers, such as the Jordanaires, Al Green (musician)Al Green, and Solomon Burke have performed both secular and religious music. It is common for such performers to include a gospel songs in otherwise secular performances, although the opposite almost never happens. Although predominantly an American phenomenon Gospel music has spread throughout the world including to Australia with choirs such as The Elementals and Jonah & The Whalers and festivals such as the Australian Gospel Music Festival.

Black gospel - Black gospel color=#a0522d bgcolor=white stylistic_origins=Negro spiritualsSpirituals, blues, hymns cultural_origins=Late 19th century African Americans instruments=Originally, sparse or none; gospel artists from Holiness traditions often used pianos, guitars and drums and occasionally other instruments; gospel quartets employed electric guitars after 1950; female artists and groups often used piano and organ accompaniment; modern choirs use piano and organ accompaniments and often drums, guitars and other instruments popularity=Peak in 1940s and 1950s50s US, derivatives like soul musicsoul remain popular derivatives=Soul Music subgenrelist=List of gospel music genres subgenres=Jubilee quartets - Mass choirs fusiongenres=Jamoo regional_scenes= other_topics=Jubilee quartets - Spirituals

Origins (1920s – 1940s) - What most people would identify today as "gospel music" — African-American religious music based on large church choirs, featuring virtuoso soloists — began very differently eighty years ago. The gospel music that Thomas A. Dorsey, Sallie Martin, Willie Mae Ford Smith and other pioneers popularized had its roots in the more freewheeling forms of religious devotion of "Sanctified" or "Holiness" churches — sometimes called "holy rollers" by other denominations — who encouraged individual church members to "testify," speaking or singing spontaneously about their faith and experience of the Holy Ghost and Get Happy Getting Happy, sometimes while dancing in celebration. In the 1920s Sanctified artists, such as Arizona Dranes, many of whom were also traveling preachers, started making records in a style that melded traditional religious themes with barrelhouse, blues and boogie woogie techniques and brought jazz instruments, such as drums and horns, into the church.Dorsey, who, as Georgia Tom, had once composed for and played piano behind blues giants Tampa Red, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, worked hard to develop this new music, organizing an annual convention for gospel artists, touring with Martin to sell sheet music and gradually overcoming the resistance of more conservative churches to what many of them considered sinful, worldly music. Combining the sixteen bar structure and blues modes and rhythms with religious lyrics, Dorsey's compositions opened up possibilities for innovative singers such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe to apply their very individual talents to his songs, while inspiring church members to "shout" — either to call out catch phrases or to add musical lines of their own in response to the singers. This free-er style affected other black religious musical styles as well. The most popular groups in the 1930s were male quartets or small groups such as The Golden Gate Quartet, who sang, usually unaccompanied, in Jubilee quartetsjubilee style, mixing careful harmonies, melodious singing, playful syncopation and sophisticated arrangements to produce a fresh, experimental style far removed from the more somber hymn-singing. These groups also absorbed popular sounds from pop groups such as The Mills Brothers and produced songs that mixed conventional religious themes, humor and social and political commentary. They began to show more and more influence from gospel as they incorporated the new music into their repertoire.

Golden age (1940s – 1950s) - The new gospel music composed by Dorsey and others proved very popular among quartets, who began turning in a new direction. Groups such as the Dixie Hummingbirds, Pilgrim Travelers, Soul Stirrers, Swan Silvertones, Sensational Nightingales and Five Blind Boys of Mississippi introduced even more stylistic freedom to the close harmonies of jubilee style, adding ad libs and using repeated short phrases in the background to maintain a rhythmic base for the innovations of the lead singers. Individual singers also stood out more as jubilee turned to "hard gospel" and as soloists began to shout more and more, often in falsettos anchored by a prominent bass. Quartet singers combined both individual virtuoso performances and innovative harmonic and rhythmic invention — what Ira Tucker Sr. and Paul Owens (gospel singer)Paul Owens of the Hummingbirds called "trickeration" — that amplified both the emotional and musical intensity of their songs.At the same time that quartet groups were reaching their zenith in the 1940s and 1950s, a number of women singers were achieving stardom. Some, such as Mahalia Jackson and Bessie Griffin, were primarily soloists, while others, such as Clara Ward, The Caravans, The Davis Sisters and Dorothy Love Coates, sang in small groups. While some groups, such as The Ward Singers, employed the sort of theatrics and daring group dynamics that male quartet groups used, for the most part women gospel singers relied instead on overpowering technique and dramatic personal witness to establish themselves.Roberta Martin in Chicago, IllinoisChicago stood apart from other women gospel singers in many respects. She led groups that featured both men and women singers, employed an understated style that did not stress individual virtuosity, and sponsored a number of individual artists, such as James Cleveland, who went on to change the face of gospel in the decades that followed.

Choirs and individual stars (1960s – present) - Cleveland and Alex Bradford brought about a revolution in gospel by launching the era of mass choirs, large disciplined organizations who used complex arrangements to turn their massive vocal power to achieve the propulsive rhythms, intricate harmonies and individual virtuosity of the quartets of the Golden Age. Groups such as The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir and The Mississippi Mass Choir are two of the most popular out of hundreds of local church-based groups.At the same time, more recent stars, such as Andrae Crouch, CeCe Winans and Take 6, have continued to draw on pop influences, just as Dorsey and other pioneers borrowed from the blues and jazz. Others, such as Kirk Franklin, have introduced elements of hip hop into gospel.The slow death of Jim Crow changed gospel's focus as well. During the years of formal segregation and repression of blacks, gospel served, particularly for the apolitical and largely quietist Holiness churches, as a covert form of political protest. Lines such as "When I get to Heaven I'm going to sing and shout/'Cause nobody there's going to turn me out" and "I know my robe's going to fit me well/'Cause I tried it on at the gates of hell" had an obvious second meaning to many listeners who were not able to protest their position in the world in more direct ways. Gospel songs were therefore the logical choice for anthems for the Civil Rights Movement, which drew its leaders, much of its organization, and its vision from black churches.With the end of the starkly simple color lines of fifty years ago, the old covert references to discrimination and slavery have, however, lost much of their emotive power. Gospel music has responded by focusing more on its alternative message, the necessity for individual salvation, while substituting the institution of the choir for the masked political commentary of older songs.

Gospel's influences - Gospel artists, who had been influenced by pop music trends for years, had a major influence on early rhythm and blues artists, particularly the "bird groups" such as The Oriolesthe Orioles, The Ravensthe Ravens and The Flamingosthe Flamingos, who applied gospel quartets' a cappella techniques to pop songs in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. Individual gospel artists, such as Sam Cooke, and secular artists who borrowed heavily from gospel, such as Ray Charles and James Brown (musician)James Brown, had an even greater impact later in the 1950s, helping to create soul music by bringing even more gospel to rhythm and blues.Many of the most prominent soul artists, such as Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Wilson Pickett and Al Green (musician)Al Green, had roots in the church and gospel music and brought with them much of the vocal styles of artists such as Clara Ward and Julius Cheeks. Secular songwriters often appropriated gospel songs, such as the Pilgrim Travelers' song "I've Got A New Home", which Ray Charles turned into "Lonely Avenue", or "Stand By Me", which Ben E. King and Lieber and Stoller adapted from a well-known gospel song, or Marvin Gaye's "Can I Get A Witness", which reworks traditional gospel catchphrases. In other cases secular musicians did the opposite, attaching phrases and titles from the gospel tradition to secular songs to create soul hits such as "Come See About Me" for The Supremesthe Supremes and "99 1/2 Won't Do" for Wilson Pickett.

White Gospel - White gospel color=#a0522d bgcolor=white stylistic_origins=Sacred Harp music, shape note singing, hymns cultural_origins=Late 19th century white evangelical Americans instruments=Originally, sparse or none popularity=Popularized through secular artists such as Elvis Presley and evangelists such as Billy Graham and Jimmy Swaggart derivatives= subgenrelist=List of gospel music genres subgenres=Bluegrass gospel fusiongenres=CCM regional_scenes= other_topics=Gospel Music Association - Christian music Often called southern gospel or country gospel to distinguish it from black gospel, white gospel music has followed a different trajectory during the past eighty years. Some of its roots are found in the publishing work and "normal schools" of Aldine Silliman KiefferAldine S. Kieffer and Ephraim Ruebush. It was promoted by traveling singing school teachers, southern gospel quartets, and shape note music publishing companies such as the A. J. Showalter Company (1879), the James D. Vaughan Publishing Company and the Stamps-Baxter Music CompanyStamps-Baxter Music and Printing Company.Southern gospel also drew much of its creative energy from the Holiness churches that arose throughout the south in the first decades of the twentieth century and that created new music, in addition to the traditional hymns of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to accompany their new forms of worship.Some early country gospel artists, such as The Carter Family, achieved wide popularity through their recordings and radio performances in the 1920s and 1930s. Others, such as Homer Rodeheaver, George Beverly Shea or Cliff Barrows, became well-known through their association with traveling evangelists such as Billy Sunday or Billy Graham.The city of Hartford, Arkansas, was for a time known as an oasis of Gospel publishing, being home to the Hartford Music Company, which employed the talents of Albert E. Brumley (composer of "I'll Fly Away") and E.M. Bartlett (composer of "Victory in Jesus").Among the best known southern gospel performers are The Blackwood Brothers, the Jordanaires and the Oak Ridge Boys. As in the case of black gospel, the churchgoing audience for white gospel music has not always forgiven its stars, such as the Oak Ridge Boys, who have crossed over to pop music. Other traditional groups, such as The Imperials, helped lead the development of Contemporary Christian Music.The Gospel Music Association is a major group of gospel artists who maintain a hall of fame covering all aspects of gospel music. The Southern Gospel Music Association (SGMA) focuses on Southern Gospel specifically and has a physical Hall of Fame and Museum located in the Dollywood theme park at Pigeon Forge, TN.

External links -

alamoministries.com - Tony and Susan Alamo and the Alamo Christian Foundation Orchestra and Choir

gospelmusic.org - Gospel Music Association web site

gospelmusicchannel.com - Gospel Music Channel web site

afgen.com - Gospel Music Home Page

home.lorettotel.net - James D. Vaughan Publishing and School of Music

tsha.utexas.edu - Handbook of Texas Online: Gospel Music

!masterhammond.syntheway.net - Gospel Sounds with the Syntheway´s Master Hammond B3 Virtual Organ

!religion.medicalwisdom.com - Lyrics to Christian Songs and Christian Hymns

sundayherald.com - Gaelic-gospel link is ‘academic racism’

trgriffin.com - - Christian Gospel Rock Music

gospelwriter.com - black gospel music

radioblack.com - Gospel music radio stations

top-country-songs.com - Albert Brumley, Sr., Gospel Songs

UK Gospel.com
The world's most frequently-updated UK-focused webite: online magazine, store, radio and downloads...
http://www.ukgospel.com/

www.loveartistnetwork.com
The Love Artist Network is a project of Love Radio. Here, fans and listeners can find information on the artists they hear on Love Radio, and links to places where they can preview or purchase music they've heard and enjoyed. For artists, meanwhile, this site is a forum where they can present their music, their story, and anything else they want to share with their fans, as well as providing them with useful links to services and resources to further promote their musical career.
http://www.loveartistnetwork.com/

sg bginfo.com
a website to support the radio program Stained Glass Bluegrass sunday 6-10 a.m.on WAMU-FM 88.5 Washington D.C. The program of bluegrass gospel favorites, is also heard on the web, at WAMU.org and Sundays 11-3 e.s.t. and Thursday mornings at 6 am est.
http://www.sgbginfo.com/

National Gospel Happening Music & Arts Festival
The National Gospel Happening Music & Arts Festival (The Happening) is a major indoor and outdoor festival of faith inspired music, dance and entertainment staged in Canberra, the national capital of Australia. This festival is not focused on a specific denomination, it is truly a people's event. This event was devised from a series of meetings of ordinary working people in Canberra. At first the drive was to gain funding for the many volunteer charities that do so much with so little in our own communities, so a theatrical play and other fundraisers were considered, but they really would have limited broad appeal and influence. They took a 'big picture' approach and determined that a gospel festival would both attract and enthuse people across the community and beyond - thus the National Gospel Happening Music & Arts Festival was born in the Year 2001 and has grown ever since. It also hosts the annual Australian Gospel Music Awards.
http://www.nationalgospelhappening.org/

Spirit Filled Records
Welcome to Spirit Filled Records one of the fastest growing Independant Gospel Labels in The Inland Empire of Southern California
http://www.spiritfilledrecords.com/

Joe Johnston
musician, songwriter, music producer,artist, illustrator, designer, writer and author
http://www.joejohnstonarts.com/

GL Media Company
We use the Internet and traditional media outlets to promote our client businesses and projects. We also conduct seminars and workshops to meet the growing needs of those interested starting a career or business in the media industry. Parent Company to Gospellinks.com
http://www.glmediacompany.com/

Lion and Lamb Productions (Christian DJ)
Exists to be the DJ of choice for the Christian Community and provide individuals with the right Christian musical entertainment to meet their needs. Serving NJ & NY
http://www.lionandlamb.biz/

Black Gospel Music Clef
Dedicated to providing resources for particpants and supporters of black gospel music. RealAudio, MP3, full length clips, links and lyrics to purchase.
http://www.blackgospel.com/

Gospel Music Association
Non-profit organization to promote all forms of gospel music.
http://www.gospelmusic.org/

American Gospel Music Directory
Features descriptions, schedules, and sound clips of various local and national Gospel music groups; and publications from throughout the country.
http://www.americangospel.com/

Gospel Music Television Network
Southern Gospel music videos cable network.
http://www.gmtn.com/