Fueled by major recording companies, it has leaped over its traditional religious walls and is now more than just church music. Last year's phenomenon of Kirk Franklin's Why We Sing (it went platinum) and the current success of William Becton's Be Encouraged (a mainstay on Billboard's gospel chart for 28 weeks and counting at press time) attest to gospel's growing popularity. According to materials received from Gospel Today magazine, within the last five years, seven major recording companies have created and staffed gospel divisions; independent gospel labels increased 50 percent, and total revenues for gospel music have nearly tripled in the past decade-from $180 million in 1980 to $500 million in 1990.
"Gospel music is coming to the mainstream," says gospel diva Yolanda Adams. "Singers are coming out of the church and introducing the gospel style to a mainstream audience."
Adams herself expanded gospel's exposure when she appeared twice on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." Meanwhile, television producer Bobby Jones reaches four and a half million viewers each week with his BET program "Gospel Explosion" and believes that while the gospel audience is expanding, "We must honor our pioneers and at the same time greet the best of the new with praise."
The "our" in this instance translates as black singers. To Jones, "gospel music is black music." To others, it is merely a term that encompasses various kinds of religious music including traditional, contemporary Christian, urban contemporary, Southern, hip-hop. Like soldiers waving banners to show their regimental colors, modern-day gospel singers march boldly and beautifully toward Zion and an ever expanding marketplace, hoisting their divisional (take this literally) colors.
It is imperative to understand where Gospel music is, where it has been, and where it is going as the music moves beyond the church. We must hope that the music is building bridges, not walls.
The Beginnings
Thomas A. Dorsey (1899-1993, composer of such standards as "There Will Be Peace in the Valley"), is considered by many gospel devotees to be the "Father of Gospel Music." The son of a minister, Dorsey was a consummate musician and as a young man accompanied some of the most famous blues singers of all time-specifically, Bessie Smith (1894-1937) and Ma Rainey (1886-1939). He also arranged and composed blues tunes. His penchant for bouncy tunes and bawdy lyrics did not keep him from attending the annual meetings of the National Baptist Convention, though. and it was at one of these meetings in Philadelphia that Dorsey first heard the compositions of Charles A. Tindley (1851-1933, composer of "We'll Understand It Better By and By" and "Leave It There" among others).
