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The following is an excerpt from a literature review I prepared on Southern gospel music for my dissertation. I would be happy to share the entire essay with you off-list if you are interested. "The history of the region and of the music is fraught with racial tension and strife. The term “Southern gospel” came into usage in the 1970s. One of the reasons was to distinguish it from African American gospel music. According to historian James R. Goff, Jr., 'The designation . . . served, in the wake of integration, to restore some separation between white and black gospel music. For most of the century, there was a clear dividing line between the music as performed by white and black groups in American churches and concert halls. The 1960s, however, brought the first widespread mixing of white and black gospel styles.'[1] This deliberate “whitening” of the name may have implications for a coded racist message. Although not explicitly anti-black, the choice “Southern” to mark off the genre from African American music and simultaneously to refer to a sound made popular during the height of legal and social segregation in the region named, culturally references and celebrates a segregated society. In this context, “Southern” means white. The coupling of “Southern” with “gospel” implies that segregation is part of the divine “good news.” I do not mean to suggest that the SGM community is uniformly racist; but rather that the act of substituting the word “Southern” to mean “not black music” carries much racist baggage by implication." ------------------------------ [1] <#_ftnref1> James R. Goff, Jr., “The Rise of Southern Gospel Music,” *Church History* 67:4 (December 1998), 725. ------------------------------ African-American communities have also referred to quartet-singing as "Southern style" to distinguish it from Dorsey-style traditional gospel music, further reinforcing the music's regional identity. There clearly is a regional identification to the music, but I remain suspicious of the euphemism of "Southern" to stand for "white." Southern gospel communities still commonly refer to gospel as "black gospel." Southern gospel used to be called just "gospel," with the term "white gospel" thrown in whenever a distinction was needed. So, I still maintain that this turn of phrase acts as yet another way for white people to avoid talking about race. Suzanne Lee Saint Louis University leesr@slu.edu
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