In the hall of the evangelical church Le Refuge, in Montreal, the songs of the assembly take on more and more volume. The cries of the faithful, imploring God to inspire them, are heard. We sing gospel here, this genre from the work songs slaves in American cotton fields, which influenced all North American popular music, from Elvis Presley to Taylor Swift, including the Beatles and Madonna.
Despite all the influence that this music has had on North American culture, gospel is still little studied at university, laments soprano Frédéricka Petit-Homme, who made gospel and community music the subject of her doctoral thesis at McGill University.
“Gospel music is a genre that is little studied and little documented,” recognizes Jean-Sébastien Vallée, associate professor and director of choral studies at the McGill Faculty of Music. In 2021, the professor brought in Karen Burke, a musician and composer who leads gospel workshops, to see how he could incorporate some workshops into the curriculum. “At that time, there were doubts about who can make gospel music, or who has the right to make it. Do you have to be black to make gospel music? » he says.
Karen Burke having reassured her that “everyone” can sing gospel, the singer came for the second time in February to lead gospel workshops with the choirs of the Schulich School of Music at McGill. To the concept of “cultural appropriation” Mr. Lavallée prefers that of “cultural appreciation”.
At the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), where the teaching of popular music and gospel is integrated, “it is part of the curriculum to a certain point, even if not all students do will, for example, necessarily sing gospel in a class. They’re going to do soul, they’re going to do rhythm and blues, they’re going to do rock, so they’re going to be interested in different genres. Then, they will move towards what suits them the most,” says Dominique Primeau, director of undergraduate programs in the Department of Music at UQAM.
A history of segregation
For Fredericka Petit-Homme, who has, since 2021, led several gospel workshops at McGill, gospel should be able to be taught in a university setting in the same way as jazz. And when she looks more closely, she sees how the history of African-American music remains marked by the history of slavery and racial segregation.
And this history still manifests itself in the experience of contemporary North American music. “During the time of slavery, the black man was here to work,” she said. It is not a being who creates, it is not a being who contributes to society. It took everything for black people to have the right to vote. They did everything so that they could not buy property.” But African Americans make music. They do gospel and blues, they do jazz. Music with which “young, rebellious people identify. They love this kind of music and go dancing on Friday nights against their parents’ wishes. […] So, there is someone who says: “If we hire white musicians, things go better. It’ll calm the energy a little,” she says.
The musician, singer, host and producer Gregory Charles agrees, and also notes how white musicians have eclipsed their black inspirations in the eyes and ears of the North American public.
“For several years, we have been talking about cultural appropriation, and the reaction of my fellow white citizens is to be extremely irritated by the question of cultural appropriation, and I understand this irritation,” he said. I understand. But at the same time, all that the black population has experienced for 150 years is cultural appropriation. Jazz was attributed to white musicians until the mid-1950s. In the 21ste century, we are not aware of that. But Jelly Roll Morton (the first jazz arranger) refused to sell his rights to white legal companies. We completely refuted that and, until the 1950s, we considered that the inventors of jazz were a quintet of white musicians called The Original Dixieland Jazz Band,” he says.
Who notes today that the song Hound Dog, made immensely popular by Elvis Presley, was first sung by Big Mama Thornton in 1952? And that the same Big Mama Thornton, who first learned to sing at the Baptist Church, along with her six siblings, was also the one who first wrote Ball and Chaincovered and popularized by Janis Joplin?
Likewise, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger were very influenced by Little Richard, whose real name is Richard Wayne Penniman, recalls Stanley Péan, writer and radio host, who has just signed the essay Satin black, about forgotten black women in music. At the roots of jazz and rock’n’roll, gospel and its secular brother, the blues, both come from African-American communities.
“It’s all this music that the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin were fed with,” continues Stanley Péan. And yet, their sources go back well beyond the Swinging Sixties, which saw the emergence of the famous Fab Four.
Gospel and blues, brothers in form
“The first form of African-American music born in the cotton fields of the American South was the work songs, said Stanley Péan. And this form is hyper-repetitive. It’s music to give your heart to the work when you’re in the field. From this form arise two musical forms, which are negro-spirituals and blues. It looks very similar in terms of form. It’s the words that change. Negro-spirituals talk about religion. It is an imposed religion, but one to which the slaves subscribe. […] They find their inspiration above all in the Old Testament, in stories which speak of the liberation of Jewish slaves in Egypt. In the 20the century, it will change its name and become gospel. This music strangely resembles the blues which speaks of everyday life, failed love stories, depression, your dog who died. »
For Gregory Charles, Negro-spirituals were the only way for slaves to express themselves in the fields. “The white colonizer, the white owner justified his property by saying that he was evangelizing them,” he said.
He notes that, in world history, oppression and culture are often linked. “Blues, fado, flamenco, tango… All of these are versions of the same thing, the expression of a poor population, an oppressed population that feels its pain,” he says. They are oppressed and, in exchange, they give culture. »