Gospel music is a genre of Christian music. Gospel music is composed and performed for many purposes, including aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, and as an entertainment product for the marketplace. Gospel music usually has dominant vocals (often with strong use of harmony) with Christian lyrics. Gospel music can be traced to the early 17th century, with roots in the black oral tradition. Hymns and sacred songs were often repeated in a call and response fashion. Most of the churches relied on hand clapping and foot stomping as rhythmic accompaniment. Most of the singing was done a cappella. The first published use of the term "gospel song" probably appeared in 1874.
The original gospel songs were similar to the song 'Nearer thy God to Thee' which was supposedly played by Titanic musicians as it sank.
Early Gospel was written and composed by authors such as...
George F. Root
Early Gospel was written and composed by authors such as...
George F. Root
Philip Bliss
Charles H. Gabriel
William Howard Doane
Fanny Crosby
The advent of radio in the 1920s greatly increased the audience for gospel music. Following World War II, gospel music moved into major auditoriums, and gospel music concerts became quite elaborate.
Gospel blues is a blues-based form of gospel music (a combination of blues guitar and evangelistic lyrics).
(Blind Willie Johnson)
Southern gospel used all male, tenor-lead-baritone-bass quartet make-up.
Progressive Southern gospel is an American music genre that has grown out of Southern gospel over the past couple of decades.
Christian country music, sometimes referred to as country gospel music, is a subgenre of gospel music with a country flair. It peaked in popularity in the mid-1990s.
In 1977 the Voyager 1 rocket was launched
into deep space, far away from our Solar System. The Voyager 1
is the furthest man-made object from earth, ever. Aboard NASA
included a gold plated record that contained information about
humanity. They put lots and lots of audio on the disk, but one
song, one song in particular, a song by Blind Willie Johnson,
called ‘Dark was the Night and Cold was on the Ground’ was
chosen to represent to whoever or whatever found it what the
human emotion of loneliness is. Blind Willie Johnson wasn’t blind
his whole life, he was blinded when his step-mother threw lye
in his face and he died of Malarial fever when his home burned
down and he had nowhere else to live but on wet newspaper…
And now his song is out there in interstellar space representing sadness.
Southern gospel used all male, tenor-lead-baritone-bass quartet make-up.
Progressive Southern gospel is an American music genre that has grown out of Southern gospel over the past couple of decades.
(The Nelons)
Christian country music, sometimes referred to as country gospel music, is a subgenre of gospel music with a country flair. It peaked in popularity in the mid-1990s.
Bluegrass gospel music is rooted in American mountain music. Celtic gospel music infuses gospel music with a Celtic flair, and is quite popular in countries such as Ireland. British black gospel refers to Gospel music of the African diaspora, which has been produced in the UK. Some proponents of "standard" hymns generally dislike gospel music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, with historical distance, there is a greater acceptance of such gospel songs into official denominational hymnals.
I watched Plague Dogs when 12 years old and it still makes me cry today. Here's the intro
for this song
text from Wikipedia
