rough the Spiritual songs. Spirituals were rural in nature. Gospel music has its roots in folk Spirituals. Gospel is urban in nature. The blacks moved from the South to North and took the music of Blues and Jazz Spirituals. Gospel came out of Blues and Jazz. Thomas A. Dorcey was one of the founders of Gospel music, he wrote the all time favorite “Precious Lord.” Dorcey the Godfather of Gospel was a Blues musician. His wife died giving birth to their baby. This tragic occasion lead him to write “Precious Lord” the audiences went wild when he performed this song and he was changed. He no longer sang secular music, he now sing Gospel. Ii is amazing how God works in mysterious ways. Of all the music I studied this semester, Gospel music is the one that is living in me. My early experience of American Gospel was what I saw in the movies. This really made an impact on me then, I thought it was rather unique. In my class experience I had the opportunity to see on video the Queen of Gospel Tramaine Hawkins, Rosetta Tharpe who introduced strings to Gospel, Shirley Caesar, Mahaliah Jackson and the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The Fisk Jubilee singers are a rather interesting group. The president of Fisk University formed the group. Fisk University was a school for blacks in 1870. The leaders were white and the students were mulattos. Fisk Jubilee Singers traveled around and performed for white people. They performed Folk Spirituals in European style called Arranged Spirituals. Arranged Spirituals had clear enunciation of words and no Improvisation. No instruments accompanied this performance. It is arranged by specific composers, it is all call and response, polyrhythmic and repetition. These characteristics maintained the Africanism in the music. Kathleen Battle was a popular singer of Arranged Spirituals. This video was very rich; it brought Gospel music to life. The aesthetics of performanc...
