Gospel Music

Black gospel music has a rich and vibrant history dating back to slavery and the antebellum South, although it did not start that way. As the Library of Congress notes, “The precursor to black Gospel music is the African American spiritual, which had already been around for well over a century before Gospel music began its rise to popularity starting in the 1930s. Songs written by African American composers in the decades following emancipation that focused on biblical themes and often drew from spirituals were the source for the development of Gospel. An example is “De Gospel Cars,” by the popular composer Sam Lucas.” 

Additionally, “When many African American communities migrated from rural to urban life during the first half of the twentieth century, they brought their worship culture with them. Echoing the ways of the single-room churches of the agrarian South, the storefront churches of the northern cities became the key setting for the development of Gospel.’