Contents Contents …………………………………………………………………….1 Introduction ……………………………………….......................................2 1. The development of spirituals and gospel songs ……………………....4 1.1. Spirituals………………………………………………………………..4 1.2. Gospel music………………………………………………...................7 1.3. Pioneering gospel composers and performers………………...............10 Notes……………………………………………………………………….12 2. The biography of Thomas Andrew Dorsey ..........................................13 2.1. 1899-1920……………………………………………………………..13 2.2. 1920-1930……………………………………………………………..15 2.3. 1930s…………………………………………………………………..16 2.4. 1940-1993……………………………………………………………..18 Notes……………………………………………………………………….20 3. Lyrics …………………………………………………………...............21 4. Analysis and comments to songs ……………………………...............30 4.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………30 4.2. Analysis……………………………………………………………….30 4.3. Conclusion…………………………………………………………….47 Notes……………………………………………………………………….54 5. Dorsey’s contributions to the development of gospel music …...........55 5.1. Dorsey’s influence on gospel music…………………………………..55 5.2. Dorsey as a gospel song writer………………………………………..56 5.3. Dorsey’s impact on choral singing……………………………………57 5.4. The National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses……………58 5.5. The structure of NCGCC……………………………………………...59 5.6. Significant gospel songbooks…………………………………………59 Notes……………………………………………………………………….61 6. Gospel music in the secular world …………………………………….62 6.1. Recording, radio, television…………………………………………...62 6.2. The Gospel Music Association………………………………………..63 6. 3. The Grammy Awards for gospel music and Dorsey’s songs…….......64 Notes……………………………………………………………………….64 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………...65 Bibliography and discography …………………………………………...67 1 Introduction I chose the work of Thomas Andrew Dorsey as a topic of my thesis because I enjoy singing gospel music. The aim of my thesis is to explore the features of his compositional style of his lyrics and their development. I will also describe Dorsey’s position in the field of gospel music. Gospel music has been popular since its establishment in the 1930s when Thomas Andrew Dorsey and his associates founded the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses promoting gospel music in Chicago as well as across the USA. Gospel music developed from the spirituals of the blacks and white Protestant hymns. These two musical influences blended, and from the late 1920s on the genre was enriched by the blues of Thomas Andrew Dorsey that gave gospel music its distinguished sound. Acclaimed as the “father of the gospel music”, Thomas Andrew Dorsey (1899-1993) was an imposing figure that helped to spread gospel music movement from Chicago throughout the USA. His music provided a spiritual uplifting for the blacks from the time of the Great Depression, but it gained its reputation among the white listeners as well because of its emotive sound. Thomas Andrew Dorsey started his musical career as a blues pianist and songwriter. After his conversion to Christianity in 1921 he started to write gospel songs and in 1932 when his wife and son died he gave up performing the blues and devoted his musical gifts to sacred music. He was not only a prolific composer of several hundreds of songs, but also a coach, an organiser of gospel music events and a choir director in Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago. In the first chapter of my thesis I describe the development of spiritual and gospel songs because these genres are closely connected. The second chapter is devoted entirely to the life of Thomas Andrew Dorsey and his musical development. The primary source of this chapter is the book The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church by Michael W. Harris, Dorsey’s biographer. Harris included in his publication a number of excerpts from the interviews with Dorsey, his relatives and associates. He focused on Dorsey’s life until 2 his early thirties, the time when the gospel music movement started to spread. The third chapter contains 21 lyrics that I either recorded from available media or found in print. In the fourth chapter I provide the analysis of the songs with focusing on their themes, origin, structure and outstanding language features. The fifth chapter focuses on Dorsey’s formative influence on gospel music featuring his activity in the gospel choir movement. The last chapter deals with gospel in the secular contexts, for this genre moved outside the church after World War II due to its growing popularity. 3 1. The development of spirituals and gospel songs Introduction In this chapter I will describe the origin, form and importance of the spirituals, in the following parts I will focus on the rise and form of gospel music and its pioneering composers and performers. 1.1. Spirituals “Spirituals record the struggle of a people to survive, but like no other histories, they also have the power to touch the souls and stir the emotions of the people who sing and hear them. “ (1) The terms “spiritual” and “spiritual song” may seem to have the same meaning because they both are used in connection with the development of spiritual. Dena J. Epstein in Encyclopaedia of Southern Culture suggests the following definition: “The term spiritual song was widely used in English and American hymnals and tune books during and th after the 18 century, but spiritual was not found in print before the Civil War. Descriptions of the songs that came to be known by that name appeared at least 20 years earlier, and Afro-American religious singing recognized as distinct from white psalms and hymns was described as early as 1819.” (2) Spirituals reflect the life and culture of the blacks after their arrival in America. The first slaves were shipped to America by Dutch traders in 1629. In a short time the economy of the South became strongly dependent on slavery, as the plantation owners exploited the slave labour for their profit from growing cotton. The origin of spirituals is connected with conversion of the Africans to Christianity. While in the seventeenth century only a few Africans were converted, in the next century special religious meetings were held which were attended by the whites and blacks alike. These gatherings developed as the reaction on the need of people living on the frontier where established churches had no impact. People in rural areas of the South desired a faith which would give them comfort and hope in their poor conditions. Religious 4 movement that partly met their needs is called the Great Awakening or the Great Revival. It took part in several waves and “gave rise to a complex of religious musical forms (hymn, camp meeting song, spiritual, and shout)”. (3) The development of the spiritual was strongly influenced by the th Kentucky Revival in the early 19 century. The blacks and whites took part in camp meetings led by Presbyterian and Methodist preachers. There they worshipped God together by songs which were highly emotional. Thus the church became the place where the traditions of European origin blended with aspects of African culture, which I will describe later. The songs that were sung at camp meetings were considered to be an essential part of the worship. It is believed that “the songs that blacks performed in these contexts gave rise to the African American spiritual.” (4) Since the attendees of the meetings were mostly illiterate, there was a need for songs which were easy to learn and remember. A number of new camp meeting songs appeared which were called “spiritual songs” (later referred to as “folk” spirituals) as distinguished from hymns and psalms”. (5) The usage of choruses, refrains and repeated lines became a common practice within these songs. There were two major types of sacred songs which corresponded to the needs of the participants of the meetings: the call-and-response style of singing and songs with repetitive chorus. The call-and-response style is actually a “dialogue” between the leading singer and the congregation which learned the response on the spot. The blacks were attracted by this singing technique because they used it in Africa too. This was confirmed by those who travelled to Africa in the seventeenth century. Songs with repetitive chorus were led by the song leaders too, the congregation joined in the chorus. Another common practice of singing and arranging sacred songs was adding “choruses and refrains to the official hymns so that the people could join in with singing” (6), because the congregation was dependent on the melodies that were already known. Among these were the hymns of Isaac Watts, whose hymnbooks were shipped to America in the eighteenth century. Other European authors of the hymns were Charles Wesley and 5 John Newton. There were also a number of folk and popular tunes coming from Europe that were given religious texts in narrative form following the pattern of strophic poems. Several aspects typical of African culture influenced the singing of th sacred songs at the camp meetings in the early 19 century. Firstly, they made use of vocal embellishments and a strong rasping voice. Secondly, they enriched the spiritual by the rhythmical elements: body movement including stamping, hand-clapping, clattering and other percussive effects which strongly emphasised rhythm in music. They did so because they were focused on music much more than their white counterparts, who emphasised the lyrics. Cusic states in The Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music : “Musically, then, the spirituals, because born from slavery, became separate from the southern folksongs primarily because of the differences in the black and white cultures and the particular aptitude of African Americans for rhythms.” (7) The contribution of African-Americans to the rhythmical part of the sacred songs is explained by their inability to repeat the songs they heard correctly and insufficient knowledge of vocabulary. This meant that they sang the songs with different lyrics in their dialect which influenced also the rhythm of the songs. The development of texts of sacred songs at camp meetings was influenced by the whites and blacks alike. As I mentioned above, there were a number of hymns taken over from European authors.