The first exploration of the history of UK black gospel music, featuring a foreword from a leading figure in British gospel Gospel music is a rapidly emerging genre and its effect and influence on other areas of the record industry cannot be underestimated. The style of gospel is wide, and apart from the traditional hymn-based choir arrangements there is a whole range of subgenres incorporating soul, jazz, funk, reggae, r'n'b, calypso, classical music, hip hop, and praise and worship which form part of this colorful and inspirational market. The roots of modern black gospel are traced here from 19th-century black pioneers such as Thomas Rutling and the Fisk Jubilee Singers to the contemporary sound of the London Community Gospel Choir. Steve Alexander Smith tells this story with a wealth of anecdotes, photos, and research that includes more than 100 personal interviews. An accompanying audio CD celebrates the spectrum of British black gospel.

Black British Gospel Music is a dynamic and multifaceted musical practice, a diasporic river rooted in the experiences of Black British Christian communities. This book examines gospel music in Britain in both historical and contemporary perspectives, demonstrating the importance of this this vital genre to scholars across disciplines. Drawing on a plurality of voices, the book examines the diverse streams that contribute to and flow out of this significant genre. Gospel can be heard resonating within a diverse array of Christian worship spaces; as a form of community music-making in school halls; and as a foundation for ‘secular’ British popular music, including R&B, hip hop and grime.

Black British musicians have been making jazz since around 1920 when the genre first arrived in Britain. This groundbreaking book reveals their hidden history and major contribution to the development of jazz in the UK. More than this, though, the chapters show the importance of black British jazz in terms of musical hybridity and the cultural significance of race. Decades before Steel Pulse, Soul II Soul, or Dizzee Rascal pushed their way into the mainstream, black British musicians were playing jazz in venues up and down the country from dance halls to tiny clubs. In an important sense, then, black British jazz demonstrates the crucial importance of musical migration in the musical history of the nation, and the links between popular and avant-garde forms. But the volume also provides a case study in how music of the African diaspora reverberates around the world, beyond the shores of the USA - the engine-house of global black music. As such it will engage scholars of music and cultural studies not only in Britain, but across the world.

Since the turn of the 21st century, there have been several genres birthed from or nurtured in Black Britain: funky & tribal House, Afrobeats, Grime, Afro Swing, UK Drill, Road Rap, Trap etc. This pioneering book brings together diverse diasporan sounds in conversation. A valuable resource for those interested in the study of 21st century Black music and related cultures in Britain, this book goes incorporates the significant Black Atlantean, global interactions within Black music across time and space. It examines and proposes theoretical approaches, contributing to building a holistic appreciation of 21st century Black British music and its multidimensional nature. This book proffers an academically curated, rigorous, holistic view of Black British music in the 21st century. Drawing from pioneering academics in the emerging field and industry professionals, the book will serve academic theory, as well as the views, debates and experiences of industry professionals in a complementary style that shows the synergies between diasporas and interdisciplinary conversations. The book is interdisciplinary. It draws from sociology, musicology and the emerging digital humanities fields, to make its arguments and develop a multi-disciplinary perspective about Black British music in the 21st century.

Music has been at the heart of Christian worship since the beginning, and this lavishly illustrated and wonderfully written volume fully surveys the many centuries of creative Christian musical experimentation. From its roots in Jewish and Hellenistic music, through the rich tapestry of medieval chant to the full flowering of Christian music in the centuries after the Reformation and the many musical expressions of a now-global Christianity, Wilson-Dickson conveys 'a glimpse of the fecundity of imagination with which humanity has responded to the creator God.' Book jacket.

Is contemporary Black British gospel music a coloniality? What theological message is really conveyed in these songs? In this book, Robert Beckford shows how the Black British contemporary gospel music tradition is in crisis because its songs continue to be informed by colonial Christian ideas about God. Beckford explores the failure of both African and African Caribbean heritage Churches to Decolonise their faith, especially the doctrine of God, biblical interpretation and Black ontology. This predicament has left song leaders, musicians and songwriters with a reservoir of ideas that aim to disavow engagement with the social-historical world, black Biblical interpretation and the necessity of loving blackness. This book is decolonisation through praxis. Reflecting on the conceptual social justice album 'The Jamaican Bible Remix' (2017) as a communicative resource, Beckford shows how to develop production tools to inscribe decolonial theological thought onto Black British music(s). The outcome of this process is the creation of a decolonial contemporary gospel music genre. The impact of the album is demonstrated through case studies in national and international contexts.

If the church is ever tempted to think that it has its theology of grace sorted, it need only look at its reception of queer black bodies and it will see a very different story. In this honest, timely and provocative book, Jarel Robinson-Brown argues that there is deeper work to be done if the body of Christ is going to fully accept the bodies of those who are black and gay. A vital call to the Church and the world that Black, Queer, Christian lives matter, this book seeks to remind the Church of those who find themselves beyond its fellowship yet who directly suffer from the perpetual ecclesial terrorism of the Christian community through its speech and its silence.

Christian Congregational Music explores the role of congregational music in Christian religious experience, examining how musicians and worshippers perform, identify with and experience belief through musical praxis. Contributors from a broad range of fields, including music studies, theology, literature, and cultural anthropology, present interdisciplinary perspectives on a variety of congregational musical styles - from African American gospel music, to evangelical praise and worship music, to Mennonite hymnody - within contemporary Europe and North America. In addressing the themes of performance, identity and experience, the volume explores several topics of interest to a broader humanities and social sciences readership, including the influence of globalization and mass mediation on congregational music style and performance; the use of congregational music to shape multifaceted identities; the role of mass mediated congregational music in shaping transnational communities; and the function of music in embodying and imparting religious belief and knowledge. In demonstrating the complex relationship between ’traditional’ and ’contemporary’ sounds and local and global identifications within the practice of congregational music, the plurality of approaches represented in this book, as well as the range of musical repertoires explored, aims to serve as a model for future congregational music scholarship.

Studying the role of music within religious congregations has become an increasingly complex exercise. The significant variations in musical style and content between different congregations require an interdisciplinary methodology that enables an accurate analysis, while also allowing for nuance in interpretation. This book is the first to help scholars think through the complexities of interdisciplinary research on congregational music-making by critically examining the theories and methods used by leading scholars in the field. An international and interdisciplinary panel of contributors introduces readers to a variety of research methodologies within the emerging field of congregational music studies. Utilizing insights from fields such as communications studies, ethnomusicology, history, liturgical studies, popular music studies, religious studies, and theology, it examines and models methodologies and theoretical perspectives that are grounded in each of these disciplines. In addition, this volume presents several “key issues” to ground these interpretive frameworks in the context of congregational music studies. These include topics like diaspora, ethics, gender, and migration. This book is a new milestone in the study of music amongst congregations, detailing the very latest in best academic practice. As such, it will be of great use to scholars of religious studies, music, and theology, as well as anyone engaging in ethnomusicological studies more generally.

In this very readable book, Roy Francis tells a personal story of growing up in a Black Pentecostal home and how, as part of the Windrush generation, his parents, like many others from the Caribbean came to Britain for the chance of a better life. This book explains the problems they faced. The religious climate they found, and their music. He explains why his parents left Jamaica to come to Britain, describes the country they came to, the environment they found, how they attempted to adjust, the religious climate in the country, and how when they faced racism, this was something entirely new to them. Many were Christians and members of the established church in the West Indies. He tells their story, explains what happened to them when they went to worship and contrast this with Pentecostals who had their own way of keeping their religious flame burning. In the 1980s, another equally important migration took place. Africans started coming to Britain. Roy explains what attracted them to the country, highlights the success they had, contrasts this with earlier Caribbean experiences and considers what is likely to happen in the future. This is a timely book that shines a light on British religious life rarely written about, but one that's been a great success story, the Caribbean and African Christian migration to Britain.