Members Get 10% Off and Earn Rewards Find Out More

Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age / Edition 1

Add to Wishlist

ISBN-10:: 0807855308
ISBN-13:: 9780807855300
Pub. Date:: 04/19/2004
Publisher:: The University of North Carolina Press

ISBN-10:: 0807855308
ISBN-13:: 9780807855300
Pub. Date:: 04/19/2004
Publisher:: The University of North Carolina Press

Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age / Edition 1

Paperback

View All Available Formats & Editions

$37.50

SHIP THIS ITEM
Qualifies for Free Shipping
PICK UP IN STORE
Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Available within 2 business hours

$22.96

SHIP THIS ITEM

Temporarily Out of Stock Online

Please check back later for updated availability.
- Condition: Good
Note: Access code and/or supplemental material are not guaranteed to be included with used textbook.

Overview

Black gospel music grew from obscure nineteenth-century beginnings to become the leading style of sacred music in black American communities after World War II. Jerma A. Jackson traces the music's unique history, profiling the careers of several singers—particularly Sister Rosetta Tharpe—and demonstrating the important role women played in popularizing gospel.

Female gospel singers initially developed their musical abilities in churches where gospel prevailed as a mode of worship. Few, however, stayed exclusively in the religious realm. As recordings and sheet music pushed gospel into the commercial arena, gospel began to develop a life beyond the church, spreading first among a broad spectrum of African Americans and then to white middle-class audiences. Retail outlets, recording companies, and booking agencies turned gospel into big business, and local church singers emerged as national and international celebrities. Amid these changes, the music acquired increasing significance as a source of black identity.

These successes, however, generated fierce controversy. As gospel gained public visibility and broad commercial appeal, debates broke out over the meaning of the music and its message, raising questions about the virtues of commercialism and material values, the contours of racial identity, and the nature of the sacred. Jackson engages these debates to explore how race, faith, and identity became central questions in twentieth-century African American life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807855300
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	04/19/2004
Edition description:	1
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.48(d)

About the Author

Jerma A. Jackson is associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Emphasizes the fascinating connections between sacred and secular forms of black music. . . . Enlightening.—Ethnomusicology

Engaging for its fresh approach and solid evidentiary base.—Journal of Southern History

Documenting the intersections of race, gender, and culture, as well as the traditions of the church and the community as they relate to black gospel music, makes Jackson's work a rich contribution to the music history of African Americans.—Journal of African American History

Jackson thoroughly explores largely uncharted territory. The souls of scholars, historians and students of gospel music will surely sing at work that not only moves the spirit, but also educates the mind.—Black Issues Book Review

[Jackson] traces [gospel music's] history, tersely telescoping information gained from archival work, historically important participants, and the sources listed in the splendid bibliography. . . . Highly recommended.—Choice

If you enjoy Gospel music, you'll enjoy this book. . . . From Thomas A. Dorsey . . . to contemporary icons, the author offers profiles and insightful research.—Gospel Today

Those of us who enjoy blues- and jazz-inflected Gospel—classic or contemporary—owe a debt of gratitude to Jerma A. Jackson for writing this book.—Sing Out!

[Jackson's] book, for all its brevity, is the clearest, most searchingly analytic and thoroughly contextualized telling yet of black gospel music's great story—its move, often led by women, from social, theological, and musical margins to the center of the entertainment industry and of African-American accomplishment.—Arkansas Historical Quarterly

Jackson's treatment of black gospel music, particularly the struggles over style and context, is especially valuable because it demonstrates the degree to which American Christians, regardless of race, fretted and debated over the same fundamental issues. . . . Singing in My Soul fills a void in the scholarship of religious music and reminds scholars that the context within which gospel music emerged and developed is crucial to our understanding.—Florida Historical Quarterly

Concise and well-written. . . . Jackson does an admirable job of exploring the early formation of the sanctified religious movement that created the powerful denomination of the Church of God in Christ.—Journal of American History

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Temporarily Out of Stock Online

Overview

Product Details

About the Author

What People are Saying About This

Related Subjects

Customer Reviews