The Impact of Gospel Music on the Secular Music Industry

Author: Portia K. Maultsby
Source: FROM HIP HOP TO JUBILEE: Readings in African American Music, 2010 (Sample Chapter, 23)

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” During the twentieth century the complex relationships between black secular andsacred music were addressed by a wide variety of writers ranging from Peter Guralnick to Paul Oliver. These articles, record notes, and essays have noted that these relationships are more complicated than simply a divide between the devil (secular music, often theblues) and god (sacred music, often gospel). In this article, Portia Maultsby, a professor of ethnomusicology and folklore at Indiana University–Bloomington, focuses on an extremely interesting and important topic: the transformation of gospel music into popular styles during the years following the close of World War II. ”

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The Gospel Ship Baptist Hymns & White Spirituals from the Southern Mountains

Author: Alan Lomax
Source: http://www.newworldrecords.org

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Liner Notes New World Records 80294

“My years of field work in this country convince me that at least half our English-language musical heritage was religious. Indeed, until the rise of the modern entertainment industry most organized musical activity in most American communities centered on the church–for example, the backwoods singing schools discussed below (also see New World Records 80205, White Spirituals from the Sacred Harp) were usually church-sponsored. Today, as modernization wipes out the settings in which secular folk songs were created, the church continues to provide theaters in which new song styles arise to meet the needs of changing forms of worship. The religious revolution that began in the Reformation has continued in wave after wave of revivals, some large, some small, but most expressing the determination of some group to have the kind of music in church that they preferred and in which they could participate. This folk process has enriched the repertory of Protestantism with the patterns of many subcultures and many periods.”

 

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