Gospel Music in the Rural South
- midsouthfolkproject
- Mar 4, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Dec 6, 2023
After I did a stint in Americorps in West Virginia from 2017-2018, I came back to my hometown- Athens, Georgia. Of course I was looking for music to play.
After meeting my now good friend David Smiley, we were invited to sit in with a gospel band. We had met a guy named Freddy at a pawn shop. We were checking out the guitars and so was Freddy. He showed us this great little lick.
I had never heard anything like it! It was funky, fresh, light-hearted.. Kind of silly. I analyzed it and realized it was quickly hopping between I and IV chords. I had never experienced this! Chord hopping on eighth notes? Awesome idea.
We went to the first band practice and the band was called Genesis. It was in Freddy's "man cave". They said "We're gonna play big!" "We're gonna play for a million people!" They were old-heads and there were some damn good musicians in that band. Truth is, they had probably played for a ton of people already! They were a career band. The cool part of church music is that a church band plays live every Sunday, and the "audience" is really a participant!
The gospel music is usually upbeat, electric, and has the entire congregation singing and clapping hands. This tradition uses electric instruments, voice, and drums, and the keyboard is a really big part! I saw this video a while ago of this kid playing church-style piano. WOW!
This kind of beat is really contagious! The video above is at above 160 bpm! Surprisingly, it can be compared with bluegrass or old-time music, which is sometimes described as a "boom chuck boom chuck" rhythm. This church music exemplified above has the same thing, though it may be more aptly called "boom clap boom clap!". Would you call this double meter?
Freddie often says "we're just country boys playing country music." Listening to church music, it makes sense how its beat is conserved with the bluegrass beat. Though one is black and one is white, they both originated in the rural South so it makes sense why this good-time beat is conserved across cultures.
I had previously been to a church in Mississippi and they had some real toe-tappers as well! They had a giant congregation there. It is a really powerful experience to be in the middle of a black church. In Mississippi they had a number that really reminded me of old spirituals- it was quite lamenting. The link below is not a recording that I made but it is the same song. The bassist in that choir told me that often he would recycle Michael Jackson basslines into his church playing.
The last experience I had with church music was when I was a teacher in Augusta Georgia for two years. This guy named Felix Key , "The Mayor of Augusta" invited me to play with him and then with his church after he caught me strolling downtown with a banjo. "You just dont pass up a guy with a banjo", he said. Well, I went on to play with him and his church for the next two years. Felix's church was the coolest experience ever! There was this pastor named Pastor Sandra who would bless everyone with oil. She was called a "prophetess" and there were other prophetesses in the area. Felix was amazing on the keys. It was like he was conjuring something. I was lucky to sit in as a violin and bass player, and we had drummers too. We really were conjuring the Holy Spirit. There was an electric atmosphere when Pastor Sandra started preaching. There was this lady behind me that, when the music got so intense, would start crying out "Ah Ah! Oh God! Oh God!" The Pastor was casting demons out of people. I remember her talking a lot about the "Stirring of the loins". She would sprinkle oil on our heads and invoke the Holy Spirit. There was a lot of screaming, but the good kind. It was firmly invigorating and I always felt like a million bucks when I walked out of there. There were also banquets after church sometimes. Good old fried food and turnip greens.
I'll post some links below to the kind of music I experienced. Here are also two links to great guitar players/ teachers at the bottom named Chris Peyton and Travis Calvin. Chris Peyton's playing actually really reminds me of Freddy's! If you are a guitar player, I recommend you learn some of these licks.
"Im not Tired Yet"- Mississippi Mass Choir
"God's Been Good to Me."- The Pilgrim Jubilees
Chris Peyton- Quartet Drive Guitar
Travis Calvin Congregational Guitar tutorial
Comments