The Roots and Branches of Gospel Music

While writing a sermon I've been asked to give at an upcoming UU service in Portland, ME, I came upon one I gave last year. A few people asked to have the text sent to them, and I thought it would be good to post as well on this blog. Here it is:


The Roots and Branches of Gospel Music
Text from a Sermon Delivered at Allen Avenue Unitarian Universalist Church, Portland, Maine, on August 16, 2009
© Dawn Boyer. All Rights Reserved.


Eunice Kennedy Shriver died this week. The media talked for days about how she started the Special Olympics, how, through her passion, the lives of millions were, and continue to be, enriched. The pain of her sister Rosemary’s tragic lobotomy had such great impact that Eunice vowed to change the way the mentally or physically challenged among us were treated. And so she did.

Aside from this powerful legacy, why am I talking about this very wealthy, white, privileged, well connected Irish Catholic woman when the topic of today’s sermon is the history of gospel music?

Because of how the footage of her funeral showed that a gospel song sung at her service brought her mourners together. I’m talking specifically about the closing song, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” It stood out because of how it lifted everyone in the church as they sang. You could see it; you could feel it; you could definitely hear it.

But hold on a minute. What does a song known for being played while African American mourners walk down a street in New Orleans behind a casket have to do with a rich white woman’s funeral in Cape Cod? Those are two totally different worlds. One doesn’t seem to belong with the other.

Ah. But that is the beauty of gospel music. As Gwendolin Sims Warren states in her wonderful book entitled Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit, gospel is universal:

“Growing up, I remember singing as many hymns by white composers such as Wesley, Watts, and Newton as I did black gospel music and spirituals. In fact, it was quite a while before I realized that such hymns were not exclusively [black] songs ….And yet, what a perfect example of the universal appeal of these sacred hymns and songs. The songs … are not exclusive to our race. These are songs that speak to the hearts of people from all cultures and races, of all ages, and from all eras of history. They are songs that heal, encourage, strengthen, reminisce, and excite. They are timeless, they are powerful—and they belong to everyone who will embrace them.”

We, the members of Rock My Soul, embrace them. Our mission is to celebrate them. And, even though (as you may have noticed already) we are mostly white, we do our darndest to make sure we get the word out about how important they are, for we’ve seen firsthand the way gospel music transforms people, and we honor and respect the great gift we’ve been given through the songs.

Let’s talk about that for a moment, this whole white versus black thing. I admit, there’s a tiny voice inside that sometimes whispers, “Who am I, a white, Irish-American woman like Eunice Kennedy (only ex-Catholic and definitely not rich!), to go around singing gospel and preaching about it?” An AME Zion preacher friend once put his arm around my shoulders and said, in a rather suggestive voice, “Do you ever get approached by any radical blacks who ask you what you think you’re doing singing their music?”

I was more than shocked, and I can happily say that has never happened. In fact, the opposite has been my experience: our work has been embraced by every African American audience we have sung to, and I am grateful for that. One wonderful woman in our community, who is responsible for making Black history known in Portsmouth, NH, put it in a way I think Gwendolin Sims Warren would have liked. She said, “Blacks can talk about how important gospel music is, and the white community is only going to listen to a point. But when the white community says it, too, then white people start listening and learning.” Then she chuckled and said, “When you think about it, most of us are pretty much a mix of white and black anyway, so why shouldn’t it belong to everyone?”

African American scholars—Horace Clarence Boyer being perhaps the most prominent—illustrate clearly how African-born slaves listened to and sang fervent hymns written by white composers during the Great Awakening in the mid-1700s, which started in New England and had a profound effect on the southern states, where slaves would attend services with slave owners. They in turn took their own understanding of rhythm and music and stories in the Bible and created the deeply personal Negro spirituals. From the spirituals to the Azusa Street Pentecostal revivals in California in the early 1800s, where whites and blacks shouted and sang and shook the walls together until social racism split them apart and white gospel and shape-note singing was born, to the jubilee quartet songs that started in the workplace after emancipation in 1865, to the birth of the black gospel choir in the 1930s, to the Civil Rights songs in the 1950s and 60s that were based on spirituals and hymns and sustained those who were committed to doing the right thing, and finally to 1969, when a black man named Edwin Hawkins reworked a Baptist hymn called O Happy Day, which was written by 2 white men from the 1800s, and that arrangement busted right out of the church and into the American Top 40 mainstream culture, gospel music has brought white and black people together to change our country for the better throughout history. And it is important for us all to embrace it and cherish it and keep telling the stories so they never get forgotten.

Last November, Rolling Stone magazine published a list of the 100 greatest singers of all time. The top 4 came from gospel roots. These were Aretha Franklin (#1), Ray Charles (#2), Elvis Presley (#3—yes, even Elvis started in gospel), and Sam Cooke (#4). These singers developed their style, their soul, their very musical essence in the church, then branched out into the secular world, and captivated millions with what had been instilled in them. Something’s going on with gospel music.

Why does gospel reach down so deep and out so broadly? Pain. Pain is the root. Who among us has not felt it? Pain is universal. We listen to the words of people who were ripped from their homeland, forced to labor without reward, made to live lives of unendurable pain, and we respond with our own voice of pain deep down inside. “Yes. I know that feeling. I can relate.”

And yet, from those roots of pain come branches of hope and triumph. Gospel music’s true power comes from its nobility. Listen to any gospel song—“Go Down, Moses”; “Steal Away, Jesus”; “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”; “I’ll Fly Away”—and you can’t help but feel the dignity, the grace, the pure grandeur of the spirit laced through the words and music. Milan Kundera, the great writer and philosopher, said, “when the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.” These songs speak from the heart, a heart that has been battered but has gained wisdom from the light within, and says, “here, take the hope I have to offer, for it will sustain you.”

And sustain us it has, for more than 300 years. The songs are just as fresh today as when they were first sung.

Let’s go back to “When the Saints Go Marching In” to get an idea of what I mean.


• It began as a Negro spiritual sometime in the early 1800s.
• Louis Armstrong was one of the first to make it into a nationally known pop-tune in the 1930s.
• It was brought into early rock and roll by Fats Domino and by Bill Haley & His Comets.
• Other early rock artists to follow Domino's lead included Jerry Lee Lewis and The Beatles.
• It is nicknamed "The Monster" by some jazz musicians, as it seems to be the only song some people know to request when seeing a Dixieland band, and some musicians dread being asked to play it several times a night. The musicians at Preservation Hall in New Orleans get so tired of playing it that a sign is posted that stipulates it will cost $10 to request the song.
• It’s often used as a popular theme or rallying song for a number of sports teams.
• Judy Garland sang it in her own pop style.
• Elvis Presley performed it during the Million Dollar Quartet jam session and also recorded a version for his film, Frankie and Johnny.
• Dolly Parton included the song in a gospel medley.
• Bruce Springsteen performed it as an encore during his Seeger Sessions Band Tour a couple of years ago.
• It was sung at Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s funeral a few days ago.

Gospel music’s branches reach into every part of our society—past to present, poor to rich, young to old, black to white, and everywhere in between. And it is important for us all to embrace it and cherish it and keep telling the stories so they never get forgotten, so that all of our lives and our spirits continue to get richer, and wiser, and brighter. Can I hear an Amen, somebody?

Sources:
“100 Greatest Singers of All Time.” Rolling Stone. November 27, 2008, p. 103 (http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/24161972/page/103)
Boyer, Horace Clarence. The Golden Age of Gospel. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Brobston, Stanley Heard. Daddy Sang Lead: The History and Performance Practice of White Southern Gospel. New York: Vantage Press, 2006.
Johnson, James Weldon & J. Rosamond. The Books of American Negro Spirituals. New York: Da Capo Press, 1977.
Sims, Gwendolin Warren. Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit: 101 Best-Loved Psalms, Gospel Hymns & Spiritual Songs of the African-American Church. New York: Holt Paperbacks, 1999.
“When the Saints Go Marching In.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Saints_Go_Marching_In