Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age.

Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age. By Jerma A. Jackson. (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Pp. xiv, 193. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 0-8078-286-02; cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8078-5530-8.)

Jerma A. Jackson offers a concise account of the evolution of black gospel music from the early twentieth century through the 1950s. Case studies of women--especially Rosetta Tharpe--permeate the text. The author examines early Pentecostal contributions to the development of gospel music, noting that exuberant rhythms and emotionalism countered the focus in mainline denominations on decorum and dignified worship. The author highlights the unique emergence of women solo evangelists in Holiness/Pentecostal/ sanctified circles, who, though forbidden to preach, nonetheless "developed critical musical and leadership abilities" as they shared their testimonies and sang before their congregations (p. 25). Their experiences primed their using gospel music as missionary work in the 1920s and 1930s and created a genre of musical evangelism uniquely their own.

Rosetta Tharpe exemplified this tendency. Raised in the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), a predominantly African American Pentecostal denomination established in 1907, she spent her early years "as an itinerant missionary, traveling and singing with her mother in churches and on city streets in search of lost souls" (p. 27). Later she used gospel music to conduct revivals, where her evangelical focus and that of other Pentecostal women differed from Baptist women, who "translated their religious ideals into social reform efforts" (p. 28). Tharpe and others, including Arizona Dranes, a pianist, and Ann Bailey and Nancy Gamble, both guitarists, proved that the pulpit was not the sole sphere of influence. These women effectively "marshaled spiritual and material resources at their disposal to carve out space for themselves as dedicated reformers and missionaries" (p. 32). Their collective commitment to musical evangelism helped to foster the rapid growth of the COGIC in the 1920s and 1930s (p. 34).

Their musical evangelism also set the stage for the commercialization of gospel music, a process that Thomas Dorsey (Baptist) and Sallie Martin (sanctified) helped foster by establishing the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses (NCGCC), an organization that made musicians less dependent on local churches for support. The commercial interest of large for-profit corporations soon flanked the grassroots entrepreneurial efforts of Dorsey and Martin with the heightened appeal of gospel and race music in the postwar years. The tension between the sacred and secular was crystallized in the experiences of Rosetta Tharpe between 1938 and 1945. Though Tharpe sang gospel music, she privatized her faith, a move that permitted her to present sacred music in secular arenas like the Cotton Club despite her religious convictions. Her fusion of the sacred and secular drew heavy criticism from morally conservative black Christians. But her success foreshadowed the popularity of gospel music and galvanized debates over the still-controversial marriage of religion and commerce. While Dorsey, Martin, and members of the NCGCC called for strict demarcations between the sacred and secular with regard to gospel music performance, Tharpe "insisted that the sacred value of gospel rested with the singer" (p. 129). The stir she created nonetheless "ensured that gospel remained relevant, indeed modern enough to survive in the world of commerce, and most of all sacred enough to lend meaning to daily life" (p. 132).

Curiously absent from the epilogue are key gospel musicians of the 1970s and 1980s, including James Cleveland, Andrae Crouch and the Disciples, Walter Hawkins, Tremaine Hawkins, Shirley Caesar, and the Clark Sisters. This absence is particularly noteworthy given that all but James Cleveland were reared in the COGIC and that Shirley Caesar and Dorinda Clark-Cole (one of the Clark Sisters) are contemporary versions of the musical evangelism treated in Jackson's work. Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age is nonetheless engaging for its fresh approach and solid evidentiary base, which will strengthen its appeal to ethnomusicologists and students and scholars of African American women's, cultural, and social history.

KAREN KOSSIE-CHERNYSHEV

Texas Southern University