Christian Sacred Music in the Americas

by Andrew Shenton (Editor), Joanna Smolko (Editor)

Overview

Christian Sacred Music in the Americas explores the richness of Christian musical traditions and reflects the distinctive critical perspectives of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music. This volume, edited by Andrew Shenton and Joanna Smolko, is a follow-up to SCSM’s Exploring Christian Song and offers a cross-section of the most current and outstanding scholarship from an international array of writers.

The essays survey a broad geographical area and demonstrate the enormous diversity of music-making and scholarship within that area. Contributors utilize interdisciplinary methodologies including media studies, cultural studies, theological studies, and different analytical and ethnographical approaches to music. While there are some studies that focus on a single country, musical figure, or region, this is the first collection to represent the vast range of sacred music in the Americas and the different approaches to studying them in context.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538183564
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/24/2023
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.77(d)

About the Author

Andrew Shenton is professor of music at Boston University. His research areas include music and transcendence, humor and religion, performance practice, and theology and the arts.

Joanna Smolko is an instructor at the University of Georgia. Her research areas include American popular music from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, American sacred music, American folk music, and film music.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Exploring Christian Sacred Music in the Americas

Andrew Shenton and Joanna Smolko

I. Liturgical Music

1. Liberation Theology: Affirmation and Homage in Three Brazilian Popular Masses

Cathy Ann Elias

2. The Guatemalan Choirbooks: Facilitating Preservation, Performance, and Study of the Colonial Repertoire

Martha Thomae

II. Hymnology

3. Sweet Harmonies of Praise: Reviving Shape Note Singing in Rural Arkansas

Andrew Granade

4. Hymns of Joyful Praise: Sacred Harp Singing in Athens, Georgia

Joanna Smolko

5. The Hymn Tunes of Thomas Hastings

David W. Music

III. Contemporary Worship

6. ‘Evangélico e Brasileiro’: Brazil’s Alternative Christian Music Scene

Marcell Silva Steuernagel

7. Ethics, Justice, and Politics in Contemporary Worship Music

Jeff R. Warren

IV. Paraliturgical Music

8. ‘Resignation’ and Virgil Thomson’s Hymns from the Old South

Zen Kuriyama

9. “Rock of Ages: Images of Jesus in Popular Music.”

Delvyn Case

V. Diasporic Music

10. The Folk Scholarship Roots and Geopolitical Boundaries of Sacred Harp’s Global 21st Century

Jesse Karlsberg

11. Anglican Diaspora: Episcopal Church Music in the Twenty First Century

Matthew Hoch

VI. Indigenous and African American Music

12. ‘Woman, Arise and Speak’: Envisioning the Study of Indigenous Christian Song in Brazil

Andrew Janzen and Meiry Yakawa

13. From the Sun to the Son: How Christian Missionaries used Music to Evangelize the Choctaw People

EmmaWimberg

14. Lift Every Voice and Sing: Embodying Black Theology in Song

Stephen MichaelNewby and Chelle Stearns

Epilogue: Singing Worlds in the Americas

Michael O’Connor

Editorial Reviews

Christian Sacred Music in the Americas is a brilliantly interdisciplinary collection. The chapters coalesce to form a kaleidoscopic view—one that illuminates not only aspects of worship and spirituality but also of resistance, resilience, and reconciliation.

Eftychia Papanikolaou

Refreshingly, this insightful volume expands the geographical frame from the typical focus on North America to "the Americas," weaving Central and South American perspectives into its rich tapestry of voices. It is an excellent addition to any sacred music or American music course.

Monique Ingalls

Admirable in its geographic reach and in its range of historical and ethnographic approaches, this volume offers a stimulating and welcome set of case studies that shed new light on areas of Christian sacred music that have not yet received the attention they deserve.

Stephen A. Crist

Admirable in its geographic reach and in its range of historical and ethnographic approaches, this volume offers a stimulating and welcome set of case studies that shed new light on areas of Christian sacred music that have not yet received the attention they deserve.

Stephen E. Crist