Wiktionary
n. A type of African American religious music based on folk music melodies with the addition of elements of negro spiritual and jazz.
Wikipedia
Gospel music is a music genre in Christian music. The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of gospel music varies according to culture and social context. Gospel music is composed and performed for many purposes, including aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, and as an entertainment product for the marketplace. Gospel music usually has dominant vocals (often with strong use of harmony) with Christian lyrics. Gospel music can be traced to the early 17th century, with roots in the black oral tradition. Hymns and sacred songs were repeated in a call and response fashion. Most of the churches relied on hand clapping and foot stomping as rhythmic accompaniment. Most of the singing was done a cappella. The first published use of the term ″Gospel Song" probably appeared in 1874. The original gospel songs were written and composed by authors such as George F. Root, Philip Bliss, Charles H. Gabriel, William Howard Doane, and Fanny Crosby. Gospel music publishing houses emerged. The advent of radio in the 1920s greatly increased the audience for gospel music. Following World War II, gospel music moved into major auditoriums, and gospel music concerts became quite elaborate.
Gospel blues is a blues-based form of gospel music (a combination of blues guitar and evangelistic lyrics). Southern gospel used all male, tenor-lead-baritone-bass quartet make-up. Progressive Southern gospel is an American music genre that has grown out of Southern gospel over the past couple of decades. Christian country music, sometimes referred to as country gospel music, is a subgenre of gospel music with a country flair. It peaked in popularity in the middle 1990s.
Bluegrass gospel music is rooted in American mountain music. Celtic gospel music infuses gospel music with a Celtic flair, and is quite popular in countries such as Ireland. British black gospel refers to Gospel music of the African diaspora, which has been produced in the UK. Some proponents of "standard" hymns generally dislike gospel music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, with historical distance, there is a greater acceptance of such gospel songs into official denominational hymnals.
Usage examples of "gospel music".
Maybe it was because she didn't have the kind of strong faith that gospel music celebrated.
Dirty ashtrays and dishes were wherever somebody had forgotten them last, and gospel music swelled as George Beverly Shea scratched How Great Thou Art for the millionth time.
They might come out your way in droves to find salvation and listen to gospel music on a hot summer night.
But he'd never turned a word of benediction or gospel music in her direction.
Sometimes Mama was there, cradling a butchered infant to her blackened breast as she rocked in time to the gospel music.
The driver liked loud gospel music and Clay was not in the mood to argue.
She was behind the wheel of an old white Buick, the heater blasting and gospel music on.
It was gospel music, but whoever was playing the piano sounded more like Jerry Lee Lewis than a regular church piano player.
Bryant, you take a boy who was raised to sing Gospel music at his Pentecostal church, a boy who worshiped his mother, a boy who from all accounts ought to have blended with the Establishment but who instead chose to fight the Establishment.
On those rare occasions when she tried to picture life after death, it was never the sunny shores on the far side of the Jordan portrayed in Gospel music but a place very like this: cold, damp, gray, silent, eternal.