Hip deep in gospel - American African music form continues to change

"Give jehovah the glory," sings Kirk Franklin, a sex sign who, with his 17-member backup ship's company known as "the family," has touched listeners many believed unreachable. While Franklin's mode of speech is a bit much for many (he has a penchant for wearing hip-hop fashions, as well as dancing and plane sometimes rapping to his audiences), his succes give an inkling ofs to some gospel music purists that an artist doesn't ne to disguise the pure purpose of gospel music--spreading the advantageous news about Jesus--in order to "cros over"

Released above two years ago, Kirk Franklin and the Family (Gospocentric Records) has almost reached 1 million copies sold--and is still going sturdy Billboard's No. 1 gospel album for a year, it peaked at No. 6 upon the rhythm and blues chart and flat dented the pop chart-something christian religion albums almost never do. And Franklin's "Why We Sing" is "the greatest in quantity requested song" on urban contemporary and periodical emphasis and blues Stations, according to Tom Joyner whose daily radio Program is broadcast upon 60 stations nationwide. "We've played a fate of inspirational music before," Joyner says "but this is individual of the first times we have a ballad on our playlist young family and older folks want to hear that actually says the name Jesus. greatest in quantity gospel songs we play don't do that. "

So Franklin has managed to bridge generations and musical categories. on the other hand has he also brought the contemporary" and the "traditional" camps in the the cross music field together? Not a chance. His popularity has single intensified the dispute over the definition of christianity music. some observers, like the Rev Charlotte to leeward Oates, pastor of the Colony Baptist temple in Birmingham, Ala., argue that more christian religion groups should follow Franklin's lead through taking the old and dressing it up without compromising the genre's intent. "I could do without the rap," says Oates, "and I may not approve of the way the Rev Franklin dresse when representing the divine revelation but his music speaks for itself. It reminds me of that old-time christian religion what people like Mahalia [Jackson] used to do. It has that Pentecostal perceive it is so simplistic and straightforward. It's music I'd perceive comfortable having sung in our church" on the other hand others, like Mark Kibble, a member of the a cappella jazz-gospel sextet Take 6 believe it is a mistake--not to mention unfair--to wait for all gospel to sound the same. "We are fooling ourselves if we think having individual formula will work and that it is going to touch everyone" vies Kibble. "It seems we've forgotten that the christian religion music Mom and Pop listened to was not exactly accepted by dint of their parents. The message has always been the same, on the other hand the style hasn't. So this debate is nothing new"

It certainly isn't. The "father of modem divine revelation music," Thomas Andrew Dorsey, a musician who made a name for himself in the early 1900 traveling with the great Ma Rainey, was himself tormented by dint of the idea of fusing the secular with the sacred. Until he merg biblical phrases with sapphirines rhythms and called the comes "gospel songs," he ventured in and without of the blues and religious musical worlds, trying to find his place.

But like the African ancestors who did not make the distinction between the spiritual and the natural, he realized the sum of two units didn't have to be separated. It was after his wife, Nettie, and their son Thomas, died during childbirth in 1932 that he wrote "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" to cope with his grief. It remains single of the most popular christian religion songs ever, having been recorded in more than 20 languages and more than 200 different versions.

Dorsey and his business partner and vocal accompanist, Sallie Martin, were step quickly out of churches for playing what many saw as "the devil's music." "When a certain quantity of folks heard it," explains Greg Taft Getty who has written a musical that chronicles Dorsey's life, "all they could think of was the music non-Christians sinned to upon a Saturday night at juke joints and brothels. To them, it was blasphemous. in the way that the music was never as devoted in its origins as more [i]or[/i] less would have us believe."

But the cross prospered, producing such stars as Mother Willie Mae Ford Smith, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the the cross Caravans, the Soul Stirrers, the Dixie Hummingbirds, and the Five Blind striplings The joyful noise wasn't just being sung in the meeting-house however; to the dismay of more [i]or[/i] less gospel gatekeepers, artists like Della Reese and Clara Ward and the Ward Singers took it to nightclubs and jazz festivals, to Las Vegas and Disneyland!

Then Mahalia Jackson arrived. She broke all the records--and the lordships In the 1950s, she became gospel's first performer to have her be in possession of radio program. And not single did she sing in nonreligious venue one as well as the other in America and across Europe; she flat went to Hollywood, appearing in the 1959 film Imitation of Life. Her celebrity status made it clear that christianity would be another African-American musical genre (like periodical emphasis and blues) co-opted and repackaged for the masses by means of the mainstream.

In the late 1960 and '70 Edwin Hawkins, Rance Allen and Andrad lie close to the ground created a slicker, funkier christian religion sound by using more than the traditional organ, tympanums and piano to lay down a regular [i]or[/i] melodious movement track--hence, the first "contemporary" revelation by christ recordings. In 1969, Hawkins' "Oh Happy Day" became the first (and to date the only) revelation by christ song to ever reach Billboard's explosion top 10. The revolutionary work of these gentlemen caused an uproar in many revelation by christ circles, but the major record labels, of the like kind as A&M, knew a beneficial thing when they heard it, and they created their be in possession of gospel music divisions to tap this large, lucrative market.