Gospel Music

Gospel music suggests many things to different people. In its most general application, gospel music refers to religious music, regardless of age or origin. Congregational songs, ring shouts, quartets, sacred harp choirs, sanctified groups, and work songs all qualify. Less broadly, gospel refers to an innovative, popular style of music combining secular forms, particularly ragtime and blues, with religious texts. Although, there are many interpretations as well as different types of gospel music, to the African-American community, gospel music has historically been a significant source of hope and strength linking past, present, and future generations.

Gospel music is rooted in the religious songs of the late 19th century known as Negro spirituals. The lyrics of Negro spirituals were tightly linked with the lives of elders in the African-American community and heritage. The songs were anthems and testaments to the joys, pains, and hopes of the enslaved. It was out of the constant development of Negro spirituals that gospel music was inspired and introduced as another type of Christian song. Gospel music is utilized in a number of political, social, and educational settings to build solidarity and to express the joys, pains, and hopes of African Americans in a wide range of localities.

Gospel music was well established early in the 20th century with the late Thomas A. Dorsey (1899–1993) as one of the vanguards of this diverse genre of music. Dorsey's early career focused on the arrangement and composing of blues tunes; he later began writing gospel music that is considered some of the greatest gospel music ever written. Dorsey played a critical role in helping to shape this music that inspires, moves, and soothes the mind, body, and soul. Consummate musician by many standards, Dorsey is remembered as “The Father of Gospel Music.” It was Dorsey who combined such genres as shape-note songs, spirituals, blues, and ragtime to create gospel music. His musical career afforded him many opportunities to accompany some of the most famous blues singers all over the world including Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, who greatly influenced the creation and birth of gospel music. Dorsey's music can be heard today in African-American churches across the United States in neighborhoods, on street corners, through open windows, down alleys, in bars and restaurants.

America's premier gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, whose untrained but vibrant voice combines with the depths of true religious sincerity, brought the writing of lyrics and the performing of gospel music to national prominence. Her singing of Thomas Dorsey's most famous song “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” placed gospel music as a standard of American music [Page 184]and launched her musical career to national and international acclaim.

With its immense popularity, widespread appeal, and influence created and established by Dorsey and Jackson, gospel music became the center of urban social life in African-American churches as well as at many of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) (e.g., Atlanta, Clark, Fisk, Hampton, Howard, Spelman, Morehouse) throughout the South. For example, the nationally and internationally known Fisk Jubilee Singers from Fisk University are known for their heart-wrenching, soul-stirring, hand-clapping, foot-stomping songs in celebration of the beginnings of Black freedom. Although, the choir is much larger today than when it was first established, the Fisk Jubilee singers continue their tradition of performing traditional Black sacred songs that reflect their advanced musical education and discipline sung in a nontraditional style to inspire Americans everywhere. Their early international tours helped introduce the world to a new genre of “spiritual singing,” later to be recognized as gospel music.

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