Bridging Liturgies in the Black Lives Matter Era

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Notes

1 This article largely draws from my keynote address at The Association of Practical Theology Biennial Conference, 14 April 2018. Thanks to Dr. Joyce Mercer for the invitation to speak, to the Yale Institute of Sacred Music (ISM) where I drafted the keynote address during my postdoctoral fellowship at the ISM, and to Brown Univ. where I edited this article.

2 Evelyn L. Parker, Trouble Don’t Last Always: Emancipatory Hope among African American Adolescents (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2003).

3 Almeda M. Wright, The Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 3.

4 Luke 4:18–19; cf Isa. 61:1, New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

5 Charrise Barron, “New Songs in the Same Strange Land: Congregational Music for Worship and Liberation in the Age of Hip Hop and Black Lives Matter” (paper presented at The Association of Practical Theology Biennial Conference, Yale Divinity School, April 14, 2018).

6 For more on the history of the civil rights movement and its classical period, see Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” The Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (2005): 1234.

7 Bob Darden, Nothing but Love in God’s Water: Black Sacred Music from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, vol. 1 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), 132.

8 Cheryl Lynette Keyes, Rap Music and Street Consciousness, Music in American Life (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 1.

9 Keyes, 1. The American music industry uses the term hip hop to categorize rap music. Consequently, although hip hop as an arts movement and culture is more than just music, I use hip hop, hip hop music, and rap interchangeably in this essay to talk about rap music.

10 Meg P. Bernhard, C. Ramsey Fahs, and Ignacio Sabate, “Students Rally in Support of Black Activists at Peer Schools,” The Harvard Crimson, November 19, 2015, https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/11/19/rally-science-center-support-yale/.

11 This understanding of “respectability politics” is at odds with historian Evelyn Higginbotham’s conception of the “politics of respectability.” See Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, “The Politics of Respectability,” in Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 185–229. See also Kimberly Foster, “Wrestling with Respectability in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter: A Dialogue,” For Harriet, October 13, 2015, http://www.forharriet.com/2015/10/wrestling-with-respectability-in-age-of.html.

12 For examples of this terminology, see “Ferguson October Rally Shows Divide Over Civil Rights,” Detroit Free Press, October 13, 2014, https://www.freep.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/13/ferguson-october-rally-shows-divide-civil-rights/17196139/; Sharon Gary-Smith, “Not Your Grandmother’s Movement,” September 18, 2015, https://www.mrgfoundation.org/not-your-grandmothers-movement/.

13 Attention to hip hop is even present in the church’s web address. “Community of Hope AME Church – Where Everyone Has A Chance,” https://www.hiphopenation.com/.

14 For more on this pattern of rejection, then adaptation, see Don Cusic, The Sound of Light: A History of Gospel Music (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1990).

15 Bob Darden, People Get Ready!: A New History of Black Gospel Music (New York: Continuum, 2004), 169.

16 Obery M. Hendricks Jr, “‘I Am the Holy Dope Dealer’: The Problem with Gospel Music Today,” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center 27 (1999): 55.

17 Lecrae, “Hip Hop Awards Performance: Lecrae Had Something to Say,” October 4, 2016. https://www.bet.com/video/hiphopawards/2016/performances/power-of-rap-lecrae-rap-freestyle.html.

18 Tricia Rose, The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk about When We Talk about Hip Hop––And Why It Matters (New York: BasicCivitas, 2008), 279.

19 Even hip hop artist Kanye West’s latest recordings, Jesus is King (2019) and Jesus is Born (2020, with his Sunday Service Choir), can be counted among such music projects.

20 In recent decades, however, with the rise of the black megachurch and megachurch aesthetics, the power over congregational singing has shifted from the pews to the stage or pulpit.

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Notes on contributors

Charrise Barron

Charrise Barron is assistant professor of Africana Studies and Music at Brown University, Providence.