What is Gospel Music?

What is gospel music, and how does it relate to jazz? 

Gospel means “good news,” and singing Gospel music is sharing that good news. While it may reference hardships and hard times, it stays upbeat, singing about overcoming those hardships and making it to the other side.

Rooted in Christianity, Gospel music has existed since the 17th century, with a  foundation made up of hymns and Bible passages sung in a call and response fashion, accompanied with vocal harmonies, and an element of percussion. 

Call and response could mean a leader/preacher/soloist “calling” out a question and receiving a “response” from the choir/congregation, it could be the choir repeating a phrase the leader just sang, it could be the reaction of the chorus to the news that’s been shared with them. This communication approach, brought by the enslaved Africans to the colonies, was used for celebrations, worship, and life events. Over the years, this technique has influenced a myriad of other musical styles.

Gospel music is one component, of many, that influenced the birth of jazz – from the African roots, to the use of call and response between instruments, to the syncopated beats. In the early 20th century, as churches were striving to separate the sacred from the secular, the lines between sacred music and secular music were becoming very blurry, to the chagrin of some, with Thomas Dorsey’s impact on Gospel music and the number of jazz musicians who were interpreting spirituals and hymns.

Composer and musician Thomas Dorsey helped bring about what we typically think of as a gospel choir. Born into a religious family in 1899,  he began his songwriting career in the realm of jazz, blues, and vaudeville. After having a spiritual awakening, he switched to focusing on church music. Throughout his career, he wrote over 3,000 songs, with over 1,000 of them being gospel. You can hear the blues influence in his gospel work – for him, the lyrics were the biggest difference between the two styles of music. And at this time, he was not the only one who straddled both worlds – there were a number of musicians who were worship leaders and choir directors by day and worked in jazz clubs at night. The musical styles blended into one another.

Here is the renowned gospel singer Mahalia Jackson performing his song, “Take My Hand (Precious Lord).”