Transitions – The Birthplace of Gospel Music
 

The Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago, the church where Gospel Music started back in the 1930s, burnt down on Friday night. Mahalia Jackson and the Edwin Hawkins Singers - among others - got their start there.

Interestingly, it was originally built as Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv synagogue, only housing the Baptist Church since 1922.

define Gospel Music please

Lilith,

Gospel Music is often considered the fusion of hymns with blues. Thomas Dorsey, the music director of the Pilgrim Baptist Church is commonly associated with it. Click here, here, or perhaps here for additional reading.

Hmmm I would argue that slaves who were forced into Christianity by their owners were singing gospel many years before that church came to be. I'd say plantations were the birthplace of gospel music.

I woud have to agree with Lilith here even your first link states that "By a further arbitrary use of the term, however, Gospel music is considered to have begun in the United States, sometimes in the 19th century, first appearing in print in 1874 with the publication of Gospel Songs by Philip Bliss."

Lilith,

Well, you did ask.

I gave what I and others consider to be a substantial answer, and provided references if you were interested. If you tend to an different point of view, more power to you.

There are so many things that slaves contributed to Americana but often those things were not officially sanctioned til they began to appear in the North where they became recognized by the whites such as the Quakers who were supporting the movement from blacks in the rural south to northern communities.

Jseal African American History is my very favorite thing. In fact,at some point I would love to teach it.

Lilith,

The Quakers were not alone.

No and I did not suggest they were. But they are a prominent religious group who help blacks move north.

BTW it's terrible sad about the church burning. What I find interesting is that it connects the African American community and the Jewish community which has at times experienced strained relations.

The church played a major role in the development of gospel music....

It was the place where a base was set to promote it, where it gained a wider audience and many notable gospel singers propelled from. I believe the term was adopted as an affectionate one more than factual in order to give gospel music a home. Such is the same for country music and The Grand Old Opry.

Very true. I just feel that often the south in it's shame over it's participation in slavery or racism often avoids acknowledging itself as the place where many of the great contributions made by those slaves occurred. I am sure my feelings are influenced by having been rasied in rural places where many African American communities and White communities were still completely segregated.

Lilith,

Your position in re the origins of Gospel Music, in contrast to negro spirituals which predate Gospel and are closely associated with American slavery, is intriguing. When it is convenient, would you provide a few references for it? I’d like to see where this goes.

Here are a few more references for your consideration, should you be interested in considering a 20th century genesis for this art form.

On NPR

A History of Gospel Music

Thomas Dorsey, the Father of Gospel Music


Gospel from Spiritual

http://www.negrospirituals.com/

http://wv.essortment.com/gospelmusichis_rutg.htm

My position is that negro spirituals begat gospel music. I have no references to cite as I don't hunt articles to prove my personal feelings. My feelings are good enough to stand alone. They don't need back up. From all that I have read, experienced, and been taught it is my feeling that gospel is an extension of the music that is commonly referred to as spirituals. Time being what most consider the separator of the two. It's quite possible I have lived in places where the two are still one.

I don't have links to prove the case, either, but it's so obviously the case. I will say I studied Musicology as part of my graduate degree & studied music in Canada & touched upon the Underground Railroad's influence on Canadian music.

When slaves were in the plantation, their harmonic pleas to God were called spirituals. When they went to Church, it became Gospel. An outlet for their woes. An outlet for their faith.

One of the things that intrigues me the most was how work songs then spirituals also became tools to communicate in code. I was fascinated the first time I was shown/played an example. Jseal posted a link to a website that has so many song lyrics. Great link. http://www.negrospirituals.com/news-song/index.htm

Lilith,

I certainly wouldn't want to challenge any of your personal beliefs. Perhaps I misinterpreted your assertion that plantations were the birthplace of gospel music.

I have found that, on occasion, I, like many, have changed my opinions or beliefs when presented with new information. Sometimes it seems like the right thing to do, and sometimes not.

How so?

I'm not here to change your mind, opinion or beliefs. It's not at all important to me that you think like me on any particular subject or idea. Diversity works for me. I was just stating mine. I don't feel the need to persuade anyone. I just have an unusual affection for African American History. <~~~~~That being said, I also would agree with a comment from actor Morgan Freeman recently. He spoke out that it's not African American History, it's American History and certainly can not be contained (or in my view taught) to one month a year.

Lilith,

While there have been, on occasion, subjects on which we may possibly hold different opinions, the subject of “Black History Month” (February I believe it is) would seem to be one on which I assume I am in agreement with you.

In all sincerity, what is up with that?

Selecting a particular month for “Black” or “African American” history month – how can the allusion to segregation, and it’s attendant ills, be possibly overlooked? How, in this day and age could this have happened, or be institutionalized? When the children were still here, during the month of February the local television stations would dutifully trot out their 20 second sound bite children essays about “African American Heroes”, or saints, athletes, politicians, etc. etc. etc.

I really don’t know the history about this, if you’ll excuse me, absurdity, but who could possibly argue with your point that it can not be contained to one month a year? The whole approach seems to be a reversion to some bizarre Jim Crow esthetics. I will admit to having little involvement in public education systems, but I would have thought that the history African American experience would have been fully integrated into the academic curriculum by the 21st century.

Sorry for the rant, I don’t usually go off like this, but I do have your attention (for one reason or another), and you are a teacher (who I’m assuming has some information about this), and it is a subject (Black History Month) I’ve always thought should be as Mr. Freeman, and no doubt many, many others, consider as “American” as G.W. & the Cherry Tree or F.D.R & the charge up San Juan Hill.

It may be that the details are dull, if not actually devilish, but I’d like to learn some about this, and your post above seemed as good an excuse as I’ll ever get to ask these questions.

I feel like I'm at a debate tournament. :eek:

Or, as some might say:

F'real, whazzup wi' dat?

Stating some facts and letting others scurry around them is not a debate Lion. ;)

I don't intend to hijack the thread, just adding what I think may be an interesting sidebar, since BIBI brought it up...the Ryman Auditorium, often identified as the Mother Church of Country Music, as it was the longtime home of the Grand Ole Opry, also started out a church facility...Capt. Ryman financed the building of a tabernacle as way of paying up a debt he felt he owed to God...
Actually, I've seen it as fairly common for one religious group to move out of a building to be replaced by another...

Steph,

There was a time when it was obvious that the Earth was at the center of the universe.
. . . it was obvious that the Earth was flat.
. . . it was obvious that the ether pervaded the universe.
. . . it was obvious that men were superior to women.
. . . it was obvious that Negroes were inferior to Caucasians.

Most people no longer hold those truths to be self evident.


There are those who assert that their arguments are correct based on authority. There are those who assert that their arguments are correct based on corroborating evidence.

By and large, as a rule of thumb, for the most part, I am a member of the second group. That is why I attempt to provide any who are interested something more than “because I said so, that’s why” when I advance an idea in an open forum. It has been my experience that reasonable people will, if presented with a coherent body of evidence in support of a proposition, be persuaded that there is merit in the proposition.

Granted, that does not always happen, but it does so frequently enough that it is my default approach to argument. Of course, different people have different approaches to discourse.

WTF does this have to do with me asserting that I feel that plantations were the birthplace of gospel music. Because I won't debate with you you feel the need to align my feelings/views with those obviously misguided ideas?

JSeal, coherent evidence is in the eye of the beholder. People are able to dig up whatever they need to support their stance on a wide variety of topics, especially on the internet. Frankly it often makes people look like they have no idea/confidence what their personal views are on an issue and that they need someone with more clout to back them up. Often you seem to find the need to debate someone's view here and you want them to prove their point. It's aggressive and annoying to people like me who are in Gen Chat to do just that, chat. When I am at a bar with friends, hanging out, and I state my personal view, I am not asked to whip out references. I will never whip them out here either. As for your authority quip, I absolutely have the authority needed to express my personal views as just that, too bad others here often fear having their personal ideas challenged and don't speak up.

...and here is yet another opinion LMAO
 

Did Gospel music originate in Scotland
Black America's musical links to Scotland
BEN MCCONVILLE

ON THE face of it jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie would seem a little out of place on a website devoted to Scottish heritage. With his trademark bent trumpet, he was the epitome of a cool musician at home on stage with 20th century giants of music like Louis Armstrong and Charlie Mingus.

But look at those surnames. Gillespie, Armstrong and Mingus (or Menzies) - all Scots monikers that were probably given to their ancestors by slave masters. It was common for owners to impose the family name on the slaves.


The findings by Willie Ruff has both struck a raw nerve and allowed African-Americans to better understand their heritage
Picture: Courtesy eyeline media
Even though people were bought and sold as chattels, there was a bizarre notion that this forced labour was somehow "family". But family they became, as they shared the same space and interbred, though mainly by rape. In this most shameful episode in our history white owners also expected their slaves to worship with them, to take on their religious beliefs and customs.

Gillespie often regaled his friends with stories of how the Scots had influenced the blacks in his home state of Alabama. He spoke to his long-time collaborator, Willie Ruff, a bassist and French horn player, about how his parents told of the black slaves who spoke Gaelic, the tongue of their masters.

Ruff - a professor of music at Yale University, a musicologist and jazz man who played with Duke Ellington and Miles Davis - was struck by the words of Gillespie, and some years after the trumpeter's death set out to investigate connections between the Scots and the blacks of the southern US.

"For Dizzy, there was no doubt about the connections. He'd talk about the Gaelic speaking blacks and spoke of his love for Scotland. He'd often tell me to get over to Scotland because the people were so friendly and the love of the music so warm," says Ruff.

A chance visit to a black Baptist church in Alabama led Ruff to discover that some congregations were still "lining out" in the Deep South. This is a call and response form of worship where a precentor sings the first line of a psalm and the congregation follows.

Listen to Audio
Hear a sample of precenting the line from members of a Western Isles church
Courtesy: eyeline media
Ruff had thought that this ancient form of worship, which predated the Negro spiritual, had died out. But then he discovered that the practise was still going strong among white, Gaelic speaking congregations in the Western Isles. His investigations also took him to a white congregation in Kentucky.

"This is the only show in town. I've found three congregations who still line out as their sole form of worship," Ruff says. "But what it proves is there is cultural transference. When I spoke to black congregations about lining out they said it came from the slave days. But once they heard whites - both American and Scots - it became clear it was more complicated than that.

"While black culture and worship does come from Africa, there were elements that were imposed by the whites, but they took this and 'blackened' it."

Lining out - or "precenting the line" - had been commonplace throughout Europe in the 16th, 17th and 18th century. At a time of low literacy rates and high costs of prayer books it had become an easy way to teach and distribute the word of God.

The English brought precenting the line to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The Highlanders, along with Puritans and Baptists, also took it to the New World, and it was widely practised by the frontiersmen, planters and adventurers who carved out what is the modern US. Eventually it fizzled out in most areas, but the tradition had been kept alive in the remote communities of the Western Isles, as it had in the rural areas of the Deep South.


For Americans in the Deep South, hearing for the first time the sounds of Scottish Highlanders precenting the line can be quite emotional

Ruff discovered a church in Alabama where blacks worshipped in Gaelic as late as 1918, giving a clue to the extent to which the Gaels spread their culture - from North Carolina to Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi - as they prospered on the back of slavery and moved to bigger and better plantations. It was perhaps a refusal to move with the times and the remoteness of the communities which has ensured the survival of precenting the line.

While the cultural transmittance between the African slaves and their white masters is well documented, this story is always going to be a raw nerve for some. For others, like Ruff, it is an opportunity for acknowledgement and reconciliation. He believes that traces of the white influence on black music exist to this day and that the "DNA" of lining out the psalms permeates modern forms of music.

At a symposium at Yale in May, the professor brought together congregations from Back Free Church on the Isle of Lewis and the Indian Bottom Old Regular Baptists, a white congregation from south-eastern Kentucky alongside the Sipsey River Primitive Baptist Association, a black congregation from Eutaw, Alabama.


Ruff believes there is much more work to be done in finding out about the fusion of black and Gaelic culture. For him the symposium was merely the end of the beginning of his search.

"Because of slavery, the African-American has never properly been able to explore his or her roots.

"But," Ruff adds, "what this work does is open new avenues. We clearly have European roots too. While it may not be satisfactory and it may not be comfortable, it is what it is. It's in our names, it's in our music, it's in our blood."

A DVD that explores the relationship between Gaelic psalm singing and African-American gospel music, Siubhal nan Salm - The Journey of the Psalms, is available through eyeline media and Gaelic Psalm Singing.

This article: http://heritage.scotsman.com/tradit...fm?id=609532005

Last updated: 06-Jun-05 13:38 GMT ;)

The only problem I see here with your line of thought, Jseal is that not one link you posted as your coherent body of evidence suport you statment that siad church was the birth place of gospel music.

Interesting. So many ideas. I think the underlying idea for me is how much cultures influence one another. I wonder with today's technology if this influence will increase or decrease.

It kinda goes to the belief that the roots of gospel began at the plantations.

Lilith,

You retain you delightful unpredictability! I had anticipated that Steph would respond to the post I addressed to her, and that you would respond to the post I addressed to you – and you mixed it all up! :)

As to my post to Steph; she asserted that a proposition was obvious. I challenged the assertion by identifying several propositions which were are one time or another, taken for granted, but are no longer. As the evidence supporting one’s notions of what is obvious changes, so should one’s notions of what is obvious. That seems to be a sensible approach to me.

As to what my unease with arguments from authority has to do with your feelings that that plantations were the birthplace of gospel music – nothing whatever. Steph’s assertion that X is obvious without substantiation is what I disagreed with. I went to some effort to exclude the subject about which she and I disagreed from my post.

I am somewhat surprised that my suggestion that the Pilgrim Baptist Church has a good claim to be the location where “Gospel Music” originated in the 1930s has been met with quite such belligerent disagreement. I had thought it a relatively innocuous comment.

I also think it is fair to suggest that those who question assertions made by others implicitly validate the notion of questioning authority. If it is reasonable for one to question the claims made by another, surely it is reasonable to provide supporting evidence and/or arguments? Is not that what conversation is about – the communication of ideas? Further, if you’ll agree that it is reasonable for one individual in conversation to question the propositions made by the other, wouldn’t you also agree that the second might be entitled to similar expectations?

You suggested that that the plantations were the birthplace of gospel music as an alternative to Chicago in the 1930s. This had all the ingredients of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis. So far so good and I tried to support my opinion by referring to what some others have had to say about the subject. But when I asked for additional information, you seemed hurt or offended, as if I was not entitled to request more of what you had to say to help me understand why you expressed your opinion.

Perhaps we have different ideas about the nature and value of conversation.

We do indeed. What you describe is debate in my eyes. Conversation, to me, is what I have had in this thread with people like BIBI. A free flowing exchange of ideas with no expectations as to the credentials or assimilation or agreement associated with those ideas. I believe the difference lies in what you expect from the exchange with others. I expect to listen to diverse views and see them as just that, views. You continuously push people to feel as if they must somehow defend themselves. You, in my opinion, actually stifle conversation when you put requirements on others. You restrict the free flow of ideas by requiring proof, validation, references, credentials. In your own words "I challenged her...", that's not conversation to me.I expect to be able to state my views here and people to view them as just that my views. I stated clearly that from what I have learned and my own experience gospel began on plantations. You can not debate that. If you want a debate find a debate forum.

Lilith,

Well, at least we agree that we disagree! :)

I do think that such notions of conversation are unfortunately limiting. Still, unto each his or her own.

I guess then that it is OK for me to say that the Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago was the church where Gospel Music got it's start?

It is perfectly OK for you to say anything you want about that church. And it's perfectly OK for me to think differently. Just because I disagreed with you doesn't mean that you can't. THAT is the difference, one of many I am sure, between you and me. I have the ability to think something different and still accept that you may view it otherwise...and I don't expect you to change your mind or prove to me why you think differently. Just knowing you view it differently is good enough.

After following this thread, I finally removed the ONE name I have blocked. It wasn’t surprising to read the voids.
ie.

A post with another prospective doesn’t seem be an adequate response. There seems to be a mission to antagonize until a BLUNT response states that somebody doesn’t give a shit about another’s arrogant and pompous views. The confusing part comes when the fight that was picked starts, the pickers first shield becomes the skirt of the cop on duty who's primary duty is to stop fights.

When somebody stirs the pop, they should have the taste for the soup and hold onto the spoon. :mad:





Excuse me now. I have work to do again to my ignore list. :rolleyes:

PantyFanatic,

Good for you!

Steph's out preaching the gospel today for our NDP party.....grrrr elections!!!;)

The world will become one homogenized pile of PC.

Alleluia! I preached to many! :D

Did you take your soap box Steph?