{"id":134810,"date":"2018-03-05T08:27:23","date_gmt":"2018-03-05T13:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=134810"},"modified":"2018-03-28T13:58:13","modified_gmt":"2018-03-28T17:58:13","slug":"african-rhythms-ideas-sin-hammond-organ-gospel-musics-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2018\/03\/african-rhythms-ideas-sin-hammond-organ-gospel-musics-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"African Rhythms, Ideas of Sin, and the Hammond Organ: Gospel Music\u2019s Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

The enslaved Africans\u00a0who first arrived<\/a>\u00a0in the British colony of Virginia in 1619 after being forcefully removed from their natural environments left much behind, but their rhythms associated with music-making journeyed with them across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

Many of those Africans came from cultures where the\u00a0mother tongue was a tonal language<\/a>. That is,\u00a0ideas<\/a>\u00a0were conveyed as much by the inflection of a word as by the word itself. Melody, as we typically think of it, took a secondary role and rhythm assumed major importance.<\/p>\n

For the enslaved Africans, music \u2013 rhythm in particular \u2013 helped\u00a0forge a common musical consciousness<\/a>. In the understanding that organized sound could be an effective tool for communication, they created a world of sound and rhythm to chant, sing, and shout about their conditions. Music was not a singular act, but permeated every aspect of daily life.<\/p>\n

In time, versions of these rhythms\u00a0were attached<\/a>\u00a0to work songs, field hollers and street cries, many of which were accompanied by dance. The creators of these forms drew from an African cultural inventory that favored communal participation and call and response singing wherein a leader presented a musical call that was answered by a group response.<\/p>\n

As my\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0confirms, eventually, the melding of African rhythmic ideas with Western musical ideas\u00a0laid the foundation<\/a>\u00a0for a genre of African-American music, in particular spirituals and, later, gospel songs.<\/p>\n

Spirituals: A journey<\/strong><\/p>\n

John Gibb St. Clair Drake<\/a>, the noted black anthropologist, points out that during the years of slavery, Christianity in the U.S.\u00a0introduced many contradictions<\/a>\u00a0that were contrary to the religious beliefs of Africans. For most Africans the concepts of sin, guilt, and the afterlife, were new.<\/p>\n

In Africa, when one sinned, it was a mere annoyance. Often, an\u00a0animal sacrifice<\/a>\u00a0would allow for the sin to be forgiven. In the New Testament, however, Jesus dismissed sacrifice for the absolution of sin. The Christian tenet of sin guided personal behavior. This was primarily the case in northern white churches in the U.S., where the belief was that all people should be treated equally. In the South, many believed that slavery was justified in the Bible.<\/p>\n

This doctrine of sin, which called for equality, became central to the preaching of the Baptist and Methodist churches.<\/p>\n

In 1787, reacting to racial slights at St. George Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, two clergymen,\u00a0Absalom Jones<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Richard Allen<\/a>, followed by a number of blacks, left and\u00a0formed<\/a>\u00a0the African Methodist Episcopal Church.<\/p>\n

The new church provided an important home for the spiritual, a body of songs created over two centuries by enslaved Africans. Richard Allen published a hymnal in 1801 entitled \u201cA Collection of Spirituals, Songs, and Hymns,\u201d some of which he wrote himself.<\/p>\n

His\u00a0spirituals were infused<\/a>\u00a0with an African approach to music-making, including communal participation and a rhythmic approach to music-making with Christian hymns and doctrines. Stories found in the Old Testament were a source for their lyrics. They focused on heaven as the ultimate escape.<\/p>\n

Spread of spirituals<\/strong><\/p>\n

After\u00a0emancipation<\/a>\u00a0in 1863, as African-Americans moved throughout the United States, they carried \u2013 and modified \u2013 their cultural habits and ideas of religion and songs with them to northern regions.<\/p>\n

Later chroniclers of spirituals, like\u00a0George White<\/a>, a professor of music at Fisk University, began to codify and share them with audiences who, until then, knew very little about them. On Oct. 6, 1871, White and the\u00a0Fisk Jubilee Singers<\/a>\u00a0launched a fundraising tour for the university that marked the formal emergence of the African-American spiritual into the broader American culture and not restricted to African-American churches.<\/p>\n

Their songs became a form of cultural preservation that reflected the changes in the religious and performance practices that would appear in gospel songs in the 1930s. For example, White modified the way the music was performed, using harmonies he constructed to make sure\u00a0it would be accepted<\/a>\u00a0by those from whom he expected to raise money, primarily from whites who attended their performances.<\/p>\n

As with spirituals, the gospel singers\u2019\u00a0intimate relationship with God\u2019s living presence<\/a>\u00a0remained at the core, as reflected in titles like \u201cI Had a Talk with Jesus,\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s Holding My Hand,\u201d and \u201cHe Has Never Left Me Alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rise of gospel<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gospel songs \u2013 while maintaining certain aspects of the spirituals such as hope and affirmation \u2013 also\u00a0reflected and affirmed<\/a>\u00a0a personal relationship with Jesus, as the titles \u201cThe Lord Jesus Is My All and All,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m Going to Bury Myself in Jesus\u2019 Arms,\u201d and \u201cIt Will Be Alright\u201d suggest.<\/p>\n

The rise of gospel song was also\u00a0tied<\/a>\u00a0to the second major African-American migration that occurred at turn of the 20th century, when many moved to northern urban areas. By the 1930s, the African-American community was experiencing changes in religious consciousness. New geographies, new realities, and new expectations became the standard of both those with long-standing residence in the North and the recently arrived.<\/p>\n

For the former, there was little desire to retain what some called \u201ccorn-shucking\u201d songs, songs associated with plantation life. New arrivals, however, still welcomed the jubilant fervor and emotionalism of camp meetings and revivals that included, among other things, the ring shout, a form of singing that in its original form included singing while moving in a counterclockwise circle often to a stick-beating rhythm.<\/p>\n

The 1930s were also the era of\u00a0Thomas A. Dorsey<\/a>, the father of gospel music. Dorsey began his campaign to make gospel acceptable in church after the tragic death of his wife and child. A former bluesman who performed under the name of Tampa Red, Dorsey, after his tragic loss, rededicated his life to the church. His first gospel song published was \u201cIf You See My Savior.\u201d He went on to publish 400 gospel songs, with the best known being \u201cTake My Hand, Precious Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dorsey was also one of the founders of the first gospel chorus in Chicago, and, with associates, chartered the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses, the precursor to gospel groups in today\u2019s black churches.<\/p>\n

Gospel song and the Hammond organ<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the ’30s, black gospel churches in the North originally began\u00a0using the Hammond organ<\/a>, which had been newly invented, in services. This trend quickly spread to St. Louis, Detroit, Philadelphia, and beyond. The Hammond was introduced in 1935 as a cheaper version of the pipe organ. A musician could now play melodies and harmonies, but had the added feature of using his feet to play the bass as well. This enhanced the players\u2019 ability to control melody, harmony, and rhythm through one source.<\/p>\n

The Hammond became an indispensable companion to the sermon, and the musical foundation of the shout and praise breaks. Solo pieces within the service imitated the rhythms of traditional hymns in blues-infused styles that created a musical sermon, a practice still common in gospel performances.<\/p>\n

Gospel\u2019s journey\u00a0continues today<\/a>, producing musicians of extraordinary dedication who continue to carry the word.<\/p>\n

Originally published in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The melding of African rhythmic ideas with Western musical ideas\u00a0laid the foundation\u00a0for a genre of African-American music, in particular spirituals and, later, gospel songs, writes UConn’s Robert Stephens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":134963,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1711,1914,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[175],"class_list":["post-134810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-sfa","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 07:17:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134810"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135940,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134810\/revisions\/135940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/134963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134810"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=134810"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=134810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}