Hi, Wilco... almost missed this... been gone all day.

As I PMed you, I started pulling out CDs to make a Gospel In Black and White CD. That's how the workshop started a dozen years ago. I made a cassette for my own listening pleasure with some of my favorite white gospel on one side, and favorite black gospel cuts on the other. To hear the Staples Singers and the Carter Family both singing Uncloudy Day is an amazing experience... Mavis and Mother Maybelle. I've had the pleasure of running this workshop at the Adirondack Folk Gospel Festival with the black gospel done by people like The Moving Star Hall Singers from the Georgia Sea Islands, a blind, black street singer, and a black gospel quartet from a storefront church in Brooklyn, along with Janette Carter and some fine traditional singers. Black folks are as rare as republicans, at a folk festival (sorry, jimmyt.) I ran a folk festival and concert series for 27 years and only managed to book one black gospel quartet (and they got lost on the way and never made it..)

Being basically a folk singer, I've done mostly white gospel in my life... just as part of the fabric of folk music. But, I've always itched to hear more black gospel, because the rhythm moves me. Even though folk music is one of my first loves, most folk music is performed by people(me included) who look like they've been Crazy-glued to their chair. Having grown up on rhythm and blues, boogie woogie and then soul music, I really responded to black gospel when I first heard it.

The workshop we just did at NOMAD, with bbc and DuaneD in attendance, I talked mostly about rhythm. Black gospel is almost impossible to do, sitting down. Like trying to do bluegrass sitting down. Over the years, I've gotten my friends, The Beans, who share the workshop with us, to get up on their feet when they sing... at least on some of the songs, and I get them to help us on some of ours. Now, jimmyt likes black gospel, being a bass player. In a gospel quartet, the bass singer is a key part of the rhythm. He sets the rhythm and the pace, if the song is a capella. I play electric guitar with my group, and I like to ride the bass strings a little hard on the faster songs.

When singing black gospel, even on the slow songs, there's a tendency to chop the words at the end of the lines, rather than holding them. When I first joined the all male (black) chorus I sing in, it seemed unnatural to my ears, chopping up the lines. But I realized that it gives an internal rhythm and energy that drives even the slow songs.
When we're singing, the lead singer will often tell us harmony guys to "snap" the phrases. I notice that when we sing for a folk audience, they immediately pick up the harmonies, and hold the words, long after we've snapped them off, savoring the harmonies. It really is the best example that I can give of the difference between black and white gospel. White gospel more commonly has a flowing rhythm, holding out and sustaining notes.

Well that's a first comment. If I see anyone besides the two of you have an interest in this, I'll add some more. I'd just say that when we did our last song of the workshop at NOMAD, Trouble In My Way, nobody was standing still (and everyone was standing.) I ran into someone the following week who'd been there who said that she was never into all that hand clapping and moving stuff, but she found herself on her feet, clapping her hands and really getting in to the rhythm of the music.

Thanks for asking, Wilco.. and good to hear from you. bbc


Jerry