Change and Differentiation: The Adoption of Black American Gospel Music in the Catholic Church

Abstract

midst the myriad changes occurring in America's black community since the sixties has been the blossoming of gospel music in settings once reserved exclusively for formal repertoires of European origin. Gospel music is no longer a stranger to university classrooms and concert halls, in which it has been receiving its due accord as a significant manifestation of black creativity and spiritual depth. Less publicized but representing profound change is the adoption of gospel forms within America's black Roman Catholic community-traditionally a bastion of liturgical conservatism. With the upsurge of movements to affirm and glorify black identity in the past two decades, the Catholic church has begun to realize the benefits of a truly indigenous form of spiritual expression for its congregations of predominantly black cultural background.2 Only in the mid-1970s has the city of Los Angeles begun to see the effects of this quiet but spirited revolution in the church's musical offerings. The aim of this paper is to analyze the change and differentiation in the adoption of gospel music and the impact it has made on three different Catholic churches in south central Los Angeles. Gospel is a musical style that originated from the grass roots of black society, a social setting that is markedly different from the stereotypical black middle-class Catholic community. While black Catholics have generally chosen to identify and adhere to European cultural values in worship and their lifestyle, those individuals who are responsible for the development of gospel represent black folk culture. In other words, it is the advocates of gospel that have maintained an identity that is distinctly black and in many ways is closely akin to traditional African culture. Because of the historical development of gospel in Pentecostal3 churches and its association with black folk traditions, it can be assumed that when religious groups such as black Catholics decide to use the style, they are also making a social statement. Members of one group have made an effort to accept characteristics of another culture into their own. Because of its roots and development in black culture, the gospel-music