Gospel Gold - Great Women of Gospel Pt. 5

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Africa is where it all began. Of all the lavish gifts Africa has given the world, the richest and most unique combination of music and religion: religion with rhythm. With the first African slaves landing on American shores around 1619 came African rhythm, work songs and field hollers - the basic elements for the spirituals. It is rhythm that drives American music: the spirituals, and by extension gospel, the blues, jazz, ragtime and rock n'roll.
The Gospel Music experience cannot be told in a short story, or even in a one hour melody of songs, for it is far too rich, far too harmonious and deliberately stimulating.  It is a living experience, always changing, always giving, and always becoming the foundation that gave moral, physical and spiritual support to a great and powerful people.

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.

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.