I had the very good fortune to be part of GospelFest 10 in Seattle a couple of weeks ago, along with my friend Dr. Jimmy Abbington. Jimmy and I spoke during the academic part of the conference. Then, on the following evening, we were guests at a program featuring some of the best choirs in the Pacific Northwest, directed by the top music directors in the area — Juan Huey-Ray, Elias Bullock, DaNell Daymon, Gary L. Wyatt, Cora Jackson and others.
But just before the music, the organizer of the festival, Dr. Stephen Newby of Seattle Pacifici University (which hosted the event), asked me to give a history of gospel music at the beginning of the program. In “four minutes or less.”
Thanks, Stephen.
That’s not really possible, of course. So I spoke (in 2 1/2 minutes, no less) on the historic nature of the closing concert/service. It is my belief that gospel music, more than any other American musical form, has been handed down from the first African slaves who were brought to North America. The African distinctives of their music remain in African-African music today. In fact, they form the basis of all popular music in this country — ragtime, jazz, blues, rock ‘n’ roll, rap — as well as gospel.
The gospel blues and jubilee and the spirituals combined together to create black gospel music.
It is an unbroken, almost apostolic, succession. That music, that message still endure. It has been, for most of its history, transmitted orally. There are people alive who learned it from the Rev. Thomas Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, Roberta Martin and the others who were there when it was first dubbed “gospel.” And John P. Kee, Donnie McClurkin, Yolanda Adams, and the others learned from them. And so it goes …
So any time gospel music is sung, it is the same song those who came before sang. There is more of a beat now and the sometimes I fear the electronic instruments will swamp the Message. But at GospelFest 10, that didn’t happen.
Instead, brothers and sisters, we had CHURCH for three very, very short hours …
(Photo of the Eufaula, Alabama, church choir, circa 1950s)