Work songs were songs the slaves would sing while working on the fields or plantation. These songs referred to slavery in the bible but at the same time had a message of hope and freedom. Jubilees are songs that are sang in the church. This type of music really shows the adaption of slaves to the regular Christian form of music of that time period. Social gospel songs have a social message with biblical references.
What most people would identify today as 'gospel' began very differently 85 years ago. The gospel music that Thomas A Dorsey, Sallie Martin, Dr Mattie Moss Clark, Willie Mae Ford Smith and other pioneers popularised had its roots in the more freewheeling forms of religious devotion of 'sanctified' or 'holiness' churches - sometimes called 'holy rollers' by other denominations, who encouraged individual church members to 'testify'; speaking or singing spontaneously about their faith and experience of the Holy Ghost and 'getting happy', sometimes while dancing in celebration. In the 1920s sanctified artists, such as Arizona Dranes, many of whom were also traveling preachers, started making records in a style that melded traditional religious themes with barrelhouse, blues and boogie-woogie techniques and brought jazz instruments such as drums and horns into the church.
It is also important to note that gospel music is not just a form of music. It is an intricate part of the religious experience for many churchgoers.
Gospel and rhythm & blues are deeply rooted in the sanctified church. Blues and R&B departed onto the secular world paths and then led to rock & roll. Gospel on the other hand remained on a strong spiritual path and has survived for many years. Gospel music sheds an undeniable influence on R&B and rock & roll.
Combining the sixteen-bar structure and blues modes and rhythms with religious lyrics, Dorsey's compositions opened up possibilities for innovative singers such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe to apply their very individual talents to his songs, while inspiring church members to 'shout' - either to call out catch phrases or to add musical lines of their own in response to the singers.
This looser style affected other black religious musical styles as well. The most popular groups in the 1930s were male quartets or small groups such as the Golden Gate Quartet, who sang, usually unaccompanied, in jubilee style; mixing careful harmonies, melodious singing, playful syncopation and sophisticated arrangements to produce a fresh, experimental style far removed from the more sombre hymn-singing. These groups also absorbed popular sounds from pop groups such as the Mills Brothers and produced songs that mixed conventional religious themes, humour and social and political commentary. They began to show more and more influence from gospel as they incorporated the new music into their repertoire.
The new gospel music composed by Dorsey and others proved very important among quartets, who began turning in a new direction. Groups such as the Dixie Hummingbirds, Pilgrim Travelers, Soul Stirrers, Swan Silvertones, Sensational Nightingales and Five Blind Boys of Mississippi introduced even more stylistic freedom to the close harmonies of jubilee style, adding ad libs and using repeated short phrases in the background to maintain a rhythmic base for the innovations of the lead singers. Individual singers also stood out more as jubilee turned to 'hard gospel' and as soloists began to shout more and more, often in falsettos anchored by a prominent bass. Quartet singers combined both individual virtuoso performances and innovative harmonic and rhythmic invention, what Ira Tucker Sr and Paul Owens of the Hummingbirds called 'trickeration' - that amplified both the emotional and musical intensity of their songs.
Roberta Martin in Chicago stood apart from other women gospel singers in many respects. She led groups that featured both men and women singers, employed an understated style that did not stress individual virtuosity and sponsored a number of individual artists, such as James Cleveland, who went on to change the face of gospel in the decades that followed.
Gospel started to break way from the traditional church setting, with the choirs and just singing hymns. There were more solo artists that emerged during these decades. Gospel artists began to perform more than ministers - they started to add more genres to gospel music. Disco, funk, jazz and many mainstream genres became a part of gospel music.
Younger audiences of gospel music are attracted to music with rhythm and a groove and an urban contemporary sound. Gospel singers and siblings BeBe (Benjamin) and CeCe (Cecilia) Winans, and groups like Take 6 delivered music to their taste one album after another. Modern gospel songs are written in the subgenre of either praise or worship; the former being faster in tempo, stronger and louder, the latter being slower in tempo and more subtle so the message may be taken in.
Shirley Caesar says, "God uses any kind of vehicle. He chooses to draw men unto Him. What has kept me going is that I try to sing about current events: drugs, black-on-black crime, a lot of hurting women who have been abused, young girls who have had children out of wedlock. I want to let them know about Jesus so that they might just get up and straighten out their lives."
Gospel artists, who had been influenced by pop music trends for years, had a major influence on early rhythm and blues artists, particularly the 'bird groups' such as the Orioles, the Ravens and the Flamingos, who applied gospel quartets' a cappella techniques to pop songs in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. Individual gospel artists, such as Sam Cooke and secular artists who borrowed heavily from gospel such as Ray Charles, James Brown and James Booker, had an even greater impact later in the 1950s, helping to create soul music by bringing even more gospel to rhythm & blues.
Elvis Presley was less known for his gospel but he was a gospel artist. His gospel favourites were 'Why Me Lord', 'How Great Thou Art' and 'You'll Never Walk Alone'.
