Yale University Library Research Guides: African American Religious History: Religion and Music

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Encyclopedia of African American Music (3 vols.) by Tammy L. Kernodle (Editor); Horace Maxile (Editor); Emmett G. Price III (Editor) Over 500 in-depth entries by more than 100 scholars on a vast range of topics such as genres, styles, individuals, groups, and collectives as well as historical topics such as music of the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and numerous others. Three volumes cover: v. 1. A-G -- v. 2. H-O -- v. 3. P-Z.
Call Number: MUSIC LIBRARY, SML, Reference Room, ML 101M
Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music by W. K. McNeil (Editor) The first encyclopedia to jointly deal with both black and white gospel traditions in America to a substantial degree. The editors approach the complex shared and segregated roots and pathways for both traditions by providing substantial references to contributing musicians, singers, ministers, organizations, and institutions to the body of gospel music in America. Much of the data presented in this reference have been updated from previous and sometimes disparate sources.
Call Number: MUSIC LIBRARY, SML, Reference Room, ML 101M
In Spirit and in Truth: The Music of African American Worship by Melva Wilson Costen Costen’s text offers an examination of African American worship through biblical, historical, theological, and liturgical lenses. It includes a history of gospel music and its substyles as a part of a body of sacred music central to many African American Christian worship traditions (i.e., camp meetings songs, metered hymns, arranged spirituals, and Pentecostal music traditions). The last chapter discusses issues facing church music in the 21st century.
The Music of Black Americans: A History (3rd Ed.) by Eileen Southern The text’s music history approach is contextualized in the midst of several musical traditions and their connections to African American history. The coverage of gospel music is one of the most thorough in book form, from its origins to the contributions of women, gospel and theater, and contemporary gospel. Bibliography, discography, biographies, sound recordings, and a periodicals list included.
Nothing but Love in God's Water: Volume 1: Black Sacred Music from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement (Online) by Robert Darden The first of two volumes chronicling the history and role of music in the African American experience, this volume explores how songs and singers helped African Americans challenge and overcome slavery, subjugation, and suppression.
Nothing but Love in God's Water: Volume 2: Black Sacred Music from Sit-Ins to Resurrection City (Online) by Robert Darden This second volume continues the journey, chronicling the role this music played in energizing and sustaining those most heavily involved in the civil rights movement.

Relevant Research Guides

African American Studies

African American Studies Critical Guide to Oral History of American Music (OHAM)

History of Gospel Music

A City Called Heaven: Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music (Online) by Robert M. Marovich Follows gospel music from early hymns and camp meetings through its growth into the sanctified soundtrack of the city's mainline black Protestant churches.
Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music (Online) by W. K. McNeil (Editor) A comprehensive reference to cover this important American musical form. Coverage includes all aspects of both African-American and white gospel from history and performers to recording techniques and styles as well as the influence of gospel on different musical genres and cultural trends.
Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field (Online) by Mark Burford Looks at Jackson's childhood in New Orleans and her negotiation of parallel careers as a singing Baptist evangelist and a mass media entertainer, documenting the unfolding material and symbolic influence of Jackson and black gospel music in postwar American society.
The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church by Michael W. Harris This volume chronicles the life of gospel music architect Thomas Andrew Dorsey. The text also traces the early development of gospel music and its sacred and secular influences before Dorsey became dedicated to composing religious music full time. Harris labels Dorsey’s form of religious music as “gospel blues” and follows its move into church music repertoire up until the late 1930s.
Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age (Online) by Jerma A. Jackson Traces black gospel music's history, profiling the careers of several singers--particularly Sister Rosetta Tharpe--and demonstrating the important role women played in popularizing gospel.
When the Church Becomes Your Party: Contemporary Gospel Music by Deborah Smith Pollard Looks at contemporary gospel music with the insider's perspective she has acquired as a regular participant in praise and worship services in the Detroit area and through her work as a successful gospel concert producer.

Oxford Bibliographies: Gospel Music (Online) Includes regional case studies, journals, anthologies, and other books.

Other Case Studies

In Search of Soul: Hip-Hop, Literature, and Religion (Online) by Alejandro Nava Argues that biblical traditions and hip-hop emerged out of experiences of dispossession and oppression.
Langston's Salvation: American Religion and the Bard of Harlem (Online) by Wallace D. Best An exploration into the religious thought of Langston Hughes.
Saved by Song: A History of Gospel and Christian Music by Don Cusic Originally published as The Sound of Light: A History of Gospel and Christian Music in 1990, this reprint is a rich text that examines both African American gospel music traditions alongside “Christian music,” its industry contemporary in Anglo-American music markets and communities. Cusic delves into the parallel histories of both traditions and delineates how both spawned their own respective, mostly independent, music industries in America during the 20th century.
When Sunday Comes: Gospel Music in the Soul and Hip-Hop Eras by Claudrena N. Harold An in-depth look at late-century gospel focuses on musicians like Yolanda Adams, Andraé Crouch, the Clark Sisters, Al Green, Take 6, and the Winans, and on the network of black record shops, churches, and businesses that nurtured gospel music. Details the creative shifts, sonic innovations, theological tensions, and political assertions that transformed the music.

Sacred Music in the Black Church

Black Hymnody: A Hymnological History of the African-American Church by Jon M. Spencer
If You Don't Go, Don't Hinder Me: The African American Sacred Song Tradition (Online) by Bernice Johnson Reagon Uses migration as a centering structure for four essays that examine different genres of African American sacred music as they manifested themselves throughout the twentieth century
Lift Every Voice and Swing: Black Musicians and Religious Culture in the Jazz Century (Online) by Vaughn A. Booker Explores the role of jazz celebrities like Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Mary Lou Williams as representatives of African American religion in the twentieth century.
Protest and Praise: Sacred Music of Black Religion by Jon M. Spencer Follows the history of intoned declamation through the tongue song, Holiness-Pentecostal music, and the chanted sermon of the black preacher. Spencer's approach, termed theomusicology, unlocks the wealth of African-American sacred music with a theological key.