The Platinum Age of Gospel Music

Authors:

Skyy Brooks, Charrise Barron

Date Created:

2025-01-01

Course Title:

Professor:

Not specified

About Paper:

In the Golden Age of Gospel (1945-1965), gospel music of contention in the music industry. The ethnographic and was known for maintaining traditional Christian presentation, historical foundation of our team’s research included field work while also gaining popularity amongst the mainstream audience. in Dallas, Texas, interviewing prominent Platinum Age gospel Contrastingly,thisbookdefinesThePlatinumAgeofGospelMusic artists and executives, as well as participant observation of (1993-2013) as a period in which the theology behind traditional worship. We also did archival research at Baylor University presentation softened, allowing gospel artists to align more with and Berklee College of Music libraries. We completed literature popular culture publicly. Gospel artists swapped their choir robes reviews exploring secularization, Black religious traditions, and and organs for streetwear and synthesizers. As a result, gospel the growing prominence of megachurches in the United States. In record sales skyrocketed, with many receiving Gold and Platinum the final stages of the book, our team is building a database that certificationfromTheRecordingIndustryAssociationofAmerica, tracks gospel music’s drastic rise in popularity in the Platinum Age solidifying gospel as an economically desirable market for artists.based on Billboard chart data. Using Tableau, we are creating an As gospel artists dipped their toes into non-gospel genres and interactive visualization of the data to be used by readers and the audiences,theysimultaneouslycreatedabridgeforgenrecrossover gospel-interestedpublic. NotonlywillThePlatinumAgeofGospel into gospel. This expansion and hypercommercialization of the databasebearesourceforgospelscholars,artists,andexecutivesto genre allowed non-gospel, mainstream artists to dominate the understand the gospel market, but the book will also greatly enrich niche gospel market, which continues to be a major source the ethnomusicological scholarship in Black sacred music overall. "Joy to idle through Boston": Robert Lowell and the Poetry of Place Sawyer Connally, Kristine Greive Harvard College | Leverett House | English | 2028 Robert Lowell’s collection of poetry, Life Studies, was the result of physical places subjective in his writing, turning the concrete of the poet’s unique process: the transmutation of prose into into the symbolic to reflect his own emotional state and the verse. It was written after drafting a series of prose memoirs historical sweep of his prominent Boston Brahmin family. Close whichwouldbepublishedonlyposthumously. Thispaperexplores readings and comparison of the prose and poems of his Life Lowell’s relationship to the places, primarily in the northeast, Studies period created insights into Lowell’s associations with and the boundaries between them depicted at the center of his public and domestic geographies in the personal and historical autobiographical poetry through the lens of this process, on the spheres. This paper ultimately argues that Lowell’s poetry is often assumption that the Houghton Library records of his transition derived centrally from the memory or feeling of a place, and that between the mediums offer some insight into the priorities and a consideration of place is a necessary one in approaching Life structures of the finished verse. Lowell makes representations Studies.

Abstract:

In the Golden Age of Gospel (1945-1965), gospel music of contention in the music industry. The ethnographic and was known for maintaining traditional Christian presentation, historical foundation of our team’s research included field work while also gaining popularity amongst the mainstream audience. in Dallas, Texas, interviewing prominent Platinum Age gospel Contrastingly,thisbookdefinesThePlatinumAgeofGospelMusic artists and executives, as well as participant observation of (1993-2013) as a period in which the theology behind traditional worship. We also did archival research at Baylor University presentation softened, allowing gospel artists to align more with and Berklee College of Music libraries. We completed literature popular culture publicly. Gospel artists swapped their choir robes reviews exploring secularization, Black religious traditions, and and organs for streetwear and synthesizers. As a result, gospel the growing prominence of megachurches in the United States. In record sales skyrocketed, with many receiving Gold and Platinum the final stages of the book, our team is building a database that certificationfromTheRecordingIndustryAssociationofAmerica, tracks gospel music’s drastic rise in popularity in the Platinum Age solidifying gospel as an economically desirable market for artists.based on Billboard chart data. Using Tableau, we are creating an As gospel artists dipped their toes into non-gospel genres and interactive visualization of the data to be used by readers and the audiences,theysimultaneouslycreatedabridgeforgenrecrossover gospel-interestedpublic. NotonlywillThePlatinumAgeofGospel into gospel. This expansion and hypercommercialization of the databasebearesourceforgospelscholars,artists,andexecutivesto genre allowed non-gospel, mainstream artists to dominate the understand the gospel market, but the book will also greatly enrich niche gospel market, which continues to be a major source the ethnomusicological scholarship in Black sacred music overall. "Joy to idle through Boston": Robert Lowell and the Poetry of Place Sawyer Connally, Kristine Greive Harvard College | Leverett House | English | 2028 Robert Lowell’s collection of poetry, Life Studies, was the result of physical places subjective in his writing, turning the concrete of the poet’s unique process: the transmutation of prose into into the symbolic to reflect his own emotional state and the verse. It was written after drafting a series of prose memoirs historical sweep of his prominent Boston Brahmin family. Close whichwouldbepublishedonlyposthumously. Thispaperexplores readings and comparison of the prose and poems of his Life Lowell’s relationship to the places, primarily in the northeast, Studies period created insights into Lowell’s associations with and the boundaries between them depicted at the center of his public and domestic geographies in the personal and historical autobiographical poetry through the lens of this process, on the spheres. This paper ultimately argues that Lowell’s poetry is often assumption that the Houghton Library records of his transition derived centrally from the memory or feeling of a place, and that between the mediums offer some insight into the priorities and a consideration of place is a necessary one in approaching Life structures of the finished verse. Lowell makes representations Studies.

Source:

Harvard / Giselle Acosta, Sarah Craycraft / 2025

Topics:

gospel, artist, music, lowell, place, platinum, age, poetry, historical, market, life, prose

Co-authors:

@skyybrooks443 , @charrisebarron444