Work the works: the role of African-American women in the development of contemporary gospel.(The Music of African-American Women: Secular and Sacred, Uplift and Self-Assertion)

Publication: Black Music Research Journal

Publication Date: 22-MAR-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Center For Black Music Research

"I must work the works of Him who sent me while it's day, for when the night is come the time for work will be done away. Would you be willing to work for Jesus any time and every day? He'll reward you when He comes to take His bride away."

--Danniebelle Hall, "Work the Works"

The popularity of black gospel music has expanded beyond the grassroots network of churches and small concert venues that powered the genre to new heights in the 1950s and early 1960s. Today, gospel has earned a distinct place on mainstream black radio, and gospel videos have moved from being shown on Sunday mornings between 11 A.M. and noon and are now played in rotation with Missy Elliott, Tupac Shakur, and Mariah Carey on BET and VH1. Recent marketing strategies that include concert tours, music videos, e-mail listservs, downloadable ring tones, concert DVDs, and movies have placed the genre's profits well above other forms of popular music. At the center of this popularity is a creative community of singers, composers, producers, instrumentalists, and independent and major records companies that have drawn from myriad musical styles and production methods.

More important is gospel's meteoric evolution to a form that today is emblematic of the social, economic, and musical beliefs of the urban identities and theological perspectives that developed in the generations that followed the civil rights movement. The term contemporary gospel, much like its counterpart traditional gospel, has served as an umbrella term that represents the stylistic characteristics and production methods that have defined gospel music from circa 1968 forward. Turn on gospel radio today or download the newest gospel single, and you will hear a complex arrangement of sampled bass lines, explosive rhythms, and intricate vocal interactions that are more reflective of the sound identities that each performer, production team, and record company has created than one singular sound. With the growing influence that R&B, jazz, Western art music, and hip-hop have had on contemporary gospel, producers such as Donald Lawrence, Kevin Bond, Kurt Carr, and J. Moss have become as notable if not as popular as the performers.

While the criticism against "secular-sounding" gospel music has grown, and fears that the church has "lost" gospel to the world are nurtured in many traditional circles, the influence of the music--and its accompanying images of dancing choirs, glamorized and highly coiffed purveyors in the newest and hippest fashions--on younger and secular audiences has not lessened.

Central to understanding the history and development of contemporary gospel is the role gender that has played in its basic practice and conceptualization. While black men have continued to hold important roles as composers, producers, instrumentalists, and CEOs in gospel music, women have shaped the performance aesthetic of the genre. It was, after all, the creative textural interpretation and vocal dexterity of female vocalists that gave Edwin Hawkins, Walter Hawkins, and Andrae Crouch their signature sounds. Today, artists such as Yolanda Adams, CeCe Winans, Shirley Caesar, and the Clark Sisters have defined and in some cases redefined the sound and image of contemporary gospel and placed it in the realm of mainstream popularity that continues in the vein of singers Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Clara Ward, who spread gospel beyond the boundaries of black churches and popularized it on concert stages and in nightclubs during the 1940s and 1950s.

Framing the present discussion around the post-civil rights generations (1969-present), specific performers, and the performance approaches each has introduced or popularized, I consider the contributions of African-American women to the development of contemporary gospel music. (1) In an effort to bring clearer understanding to the ever-evolving concept of "contemporary," this discussion extends beyond the work of previous scholars, which has focused on the contemporary gospel sound of the late 1960s and early 1970s. For this purpose, I examine the years 1969 through 2005 as three stylistic periods: (1) 1969-1985; (2) 1985-1994; and (3) 1994-2005. These years are, of course, approximations, representing dramatic stylistic shifts in gospel music and building on previous scholars' definition of contemporary gospel. (2)

The First Era (1969-1985)

It is a commonly held notion among scholars, critics, and performers that the transition to the contemporary gospel era began in 1969 with the recording of a revamped version of the Baptist hymn "Oh Happy Day" by the Northern California State Youth Choir. (3) What began as a fundraising initiative for the regional choir soon became a hit on radio stations in the Bay Area and a musical landmark. The initial goal was to make five hundred copies for the group to sell on the streets. But when a disc jockey at KSAN in the Bay Area began playing "Oh Happy Day" during his midday show, it became one of the most requested songs. The recording earned a listing on Billboard's pop charts, reaching the top five, and in time sold an unprecedented one million copies.

The visionary who had conceived of the fund-raising idea and who had crafted the sound of the song was pianist Edwin Hawkins. He and his younger brother Walter had become staples in the Bay Area's gospel scene. But neither had predicted that their grassroots effort would propel them to overnight stardom and a five-thousand-dollar recording contract. The song opens with electric bass and piano establishing the simple, but rhythmic vamp that returns several times throughout the performance. Then a husky, alto voice enters with the first lines of text, "Oh, happy day." The choir's subsequent response and the building antiphony between lead, choir, and instruments, which climaxes at the bridge, "He taught me how to watch, fight, and pray," foreshadows the younger generation's reconceptualization of gospel. The song rose to number four on Billboard's pop charts and number two in England (Harris 1999).

Gospel's crossover to mainstream audiences, which had begun years earlier with Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward's appearances at the Newport Jazz Festival, gained momentum with "Oh Happy Day." While the preceding generation of gospel performers had created a number of stylistic approaches that in time had come to define the sound of 1960s soul music, especially the music of Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Sam Cooke, "Oh Happy Day" reflected the complete opposite. Hawkins's arrangement was a combination of Sly Stone, James Brown, and the saintly voices and rhythms of his Pentecostal upbringing. But the revolutionary nature of the Northern California State Youth Choir was not simply in the sound but also in the group's attire, which included bell-bottoms and Afros. The group's members, female and male, exchanged the clean-cut pompadours and press and curls of the previous generation for that which was defining the younger mainstream black culture and the Black Power movement's "black is beautiful" rhetoric.

Despite criticism from traditionally minded church folks, "Oh Happy Day" proved to be only the beginning of a stronger, more audible marriage of the secular and the sacred, delineating a new style of gospel. Although many such performances concentrated on the funk-inspired bass line and instrumentation, the soul-inspired vocals were the biggest draw. One of the first voices of contemporary gospel was not Edwin Hawkins, although he is often thought to have been the architect of the sound, but Dorothy Combs Morrison, the soloist on "Oh Happy Day." Her earthy vocals were more in the vein of Mavis Staples and Aretha Franklin than Mahalia Jackson, and her exclamations of "Good God, my Lord," spoke more to the rich emotional energy of soul music than the sanctified shouts of the previous artists.

"Oh Happy Day" inspired a number of debates concerning the direction in which gospel was going. Despite often spirited conversations about too much of the "world" showing up in the music, the record resonated strongly with younger audiences, who in the wake of the Black Power movement had become more disapproving of what many deemed outdated theological perspectives and practices. Edwin Hawkins's success birthed a number of new voices in gospel music, most notably, his brother Walter and peer Andrae Crouch. Coming from similar Holiness/Pentecostal backgrounds, these two composers expanded the concept of gospel hymns beyond those written by Charles Tindley, Lucie Campbell, Thomas Dorsey, and others.

Crouch, in particular, went beyond the funk influences that Edwin Hawkins had introduced and infused rock elements into his gospel compositions. Many mainstream black churches rejected the contemporary gospel sound, but Crouch and...

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