Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church

The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church 88 Black Sacred Music Michael W. Harris. The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xxiii, When blues singer Son House crooned on "Preachin' the Blues," "I swear to God, I got to preach these gospel blues," he was not referring to the same "gospel blues" as Michael Harris in his book The Rise of Gospel Blues . Harris is writing about the gospel created by Thomas A. Dorsey, music traditionally viewed as the religious antithesis of the blues. To Harris, however, gospel is "sacred blues," just as to James Cone the blues are "secular spirituals ." Harris's joining of the terms "gospel" and "blues" is akin to Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Son House, and Big Bill Broonzy combining the terms "preaching" and "blues" in the songs that each of them called "Preaching the Blues." In both instances, the synthesis ex­ presses the sacred-secular dialectic, the theological tension, that characterized the lives of these great musicians. In fact, Harris care­ fully portrays Dorsey as the personification of the tension between the assimilationist and indigenous African American traditions . This "double consciousness," as DuBois would say, http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Black Sacred Music Duke University Press

The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church

Black Sacred Music , Volume 7 (1) – Mar 1, 1993

Loading next page...
 
/lp/duke-university-press/the-rise-of-gospel-blues-the-music-of-thomas-andrew-dorsey-in-the-SLGoNTqGYz

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1043-9455
eISSN
2640-9879
DOI
10.1215/10439455-7.1.88
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

88 Black Sacred Music Michael W. Harris. The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xxiii, When blues singer Son House crooned on "Preachin' the Blues," "I swear to God, I got to preach these gospel blues," he was not referring to the same "gospel blues" as Michael Harris in his book The Rise of Gospel Blues . Harris is writing about the gospel created by Thomas A. Dorsey, music traditionally viewed as the religious antithesis of the blues. To Harris, however, gospel is "sacred blues," just as to James Cone the blues are "secular spirituals ." Harris's joining of the terms "gospel" and "blues" is akin to Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Son House, and Big Bill Broonzy combining the terms "preaching" and "blues" in the songs that each of them called "Preaching the Blues." In both instances, the synthesis ex­ presses the sacred-secular dialectic, the theological tension, that characterized the lives of these great musicians. In fact, Harris care­ fully portrays Dorsey as the personification of the tension between the assimilationist and indigenous African American traditions . This "double consciousness," as DuBois would say,

Journal

Black Sacred MusicDuke University Press

Published: Mar 1, 1993

There are no references for this article.