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Soundtracks Of Our Lives 15/02/04
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Lugia
970 posts

Gospel
Feb 17, 2004, 16:50
Being a Pure Land Buddhist, you'd not expect me to know a helluva lot about this one. But nooo...for I also grew up in the Southern US, my maternal grandparents were 'foot-warshin'' Baptists, and until the 1970s they would have white gospel on Nashville TV at noon each day on Channel 5.

You've got two directions here...black and white. Remember, the divergent directions stem from the cultural segregation in the South, so each developed from different sources and spawned off different styles from it.

BLACK GOSPEL: This is where the more amazing stuff lies, IMHO. From this, one gets threads that run off into jazz, R&B, rock and roll, blues, and so on. Artists worth your attention: The Five Blind Boys of Alabama, Mighty Clouds of Joy, Rev. James Cleveland, The Winans, Mahalia Jackson, Pops Staples, early Aretha Franklin (yep!), and on and on...a real wealth of American roots music. As long as you steer clear of the few artists (and I do mean few) that tried to assimilate into the whole "Christian Music" slop-bin, you'll hardly go wrong.

WHITE GOSPEL: A lot of this stuff gets really treacly, especially when it turns into "Christian" music. But there's still standouts. The Louvin Bros.'s "Satan Is Real" is an amazing, scarifying, moonshine-steeped Jesus-trip. Elvis's gospel records...yep...they're actually really impressive. The Stamps Quartet and early Oak Ridge Boys (before they went secular and more commercial) do some nifty country-gospel harmonies. And then there's a lot of White Gospel music that is shot thru other 'secular' artists' music that requires a good bit of looking. But if you stick with the real, classic country music, you find gems like Roy Acuff's "Great Speckled Bird", etc.

Remember, each of these approaches religion just as differently as they emerge from their sources. Black gospel is intense, celebratory stuff. White gospel operates more from the 'fear, trembling and wonderment' direction. So that's another thing to keep in mind when/if you start hunting some of this work down in terms of which is darker, which is more 'up', and so forth.
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