Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age - Softcover

Jackson, Jerma A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807855308 ISBN 13: 9780807855300

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004

Synopsis

Black gospel music grew from obscure nineteenth-century beginnings to become the leading style of sacred music in black American communities after World War II. Jerma A. Jackson traces the music's unique history, profiling the careers of several singers--particularly Sister Rosetta Tharpe--and demonstrating the important role women played in popularizing gospel.

Female gospel singers initially developed their musical abilities in churches where gospel prevailed as a mode of worship. Few, however, stayed exclusively in the religious realm. As recordings and sheet music pushed gospel into the commercial arena, gospel began to develop a life beyond the church, spreading first among a broad spectrum of African Americans and then to white middle-class audiences. Retail outlets, recording companies, and booking agencies turned gospel into big business, and local church singers emerged as national and international celebrities. Amid these changes, the music acquired increasing significance as a source of black identity.

These successes, however, generated fierce controversy. As gospel gained public visibility and broad commercial appeal, debates broke out over the meaning of the music and its message, raising questions about the virtues of commercialism and material values, the contours of racial identity, and the nature of the sacred. Jackson engages these debates to explore how race, faith, and identity became central questions in twentieth-century African American life.

About this title

Book Description

"Emphasizes the fascinating connections between sacred and secular forms of black music. . . . Enlightening."-- Ethnomusicology

From the Inside Flap

Jackson shows how over the 20th century, as black gospel music achieved recognition outside of the church, many African Americans worried that the music was losing its sacred moorings. This tension played out in the lives and careers of the great artists of the period, like Thomas Dorsey and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, whose roles in the evolution of black gospel music are examined here.

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0807855308
• ISBN 13: 9780807855300
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 193