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Author Harrison, Douglas, 1975-

Title Then sings my soul : the culture of southern gospel music / Douglas Harrison
Published Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2012]
©2012

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Description 1 online resource
Series Music in American life
Music in American life.
Contents Introduction : A native informant's report from the field -- Glory bumps, or the psychodynamics of the southern gospel experience -- Nostalgia, modernity, and the reconstruction roots of a tradition -- The rise of "southern" gospel music and the compensations of history -- The gaitherization of contemporary southern gospel -- Southern gospel in the key of queer -- Epilogue : the soul's best song -- List of songs referenced -- Appendix : methods and preliminary findings of a survey of attitudes and beliefs about southern gospel music
Summary In this ambitious book on southern gospel music, Douglas Harrison reexamines the music's historical emergence and its function as a modern cultural phenomenon. Rather than seeing the music as a single rhetoric focusing on the afterlife as compensation for worldly sacrifice, Harrison presents southern gospel as a network of interconnected messages that evangelical Christians use to make individual sense of both Protestant theological doctrines and their own lived experiences. Harrison explores how listeners and consumers of southern gospel integrate its lyrics and music into their own religious experience, building up individual--and potentially subversive--meanings beneath a surface of evangelical consensus. Reassessing the contributions of such figures as Aldine Kieffer, James D. Vaughan, and Bill and Gloria Gaither, Then Sings My Soul traces an alternative history of southern gospel in the twentieth century, one that emphasizes the music's interaction with broader shifts in American life beyond the narrow confines of southern gospel's borders. Harrison's discussion includes the "gay-gospel paradox"--The experience of non-heterosexuals in gospel music--as emblematic of fundamentalism's conflict with the postmodern world [Publisher description]
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Gospel music -- Southern States -- History and criticism
Popular culture -- Religious aspects.
MUSIC -- Religious -- Gospel.
RELIGION -- Christianity -- General.
Gospel music
Popular culture -- Religious aspects
Southern States
Genre/Form Electronic books
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2019718188
ISBN 9780252094095
0252094093