Otherwise, Instituting

Abstract

This essay considers the movement of spirit that occurred with Jenny Evans Moore at the beginnings of the Azusa Street Blackpentecostal movement in Los Angeles, 1906. Arguing that Jenny Evans Moore serves as a critical figure by which to understand the sonic culture of Blackpentecostalism, this essay addresses the ways sound making can be generative for thinking otherwise relations to institution building and maintenance. What will become apparent in the essay are the ways Jenny Evens Moore moved both with the prompting of the Holy Spirit to the piano to provide musical accompaniment during a church service while also serving as heuristic device, the movement toward the piano to provide music would be a method by which Blackpentecostals comment on the world, produce an otherwise critique of institutionality that often quells creativity.