Aural Fixations

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Gloryland: 30 Bluegrass Gospel Classics
(Time Life)
Gospel Music
(Hyena)
It's a common theme among most observers of American society that, under President Bush, this country now suffers from an unprecedented and rancorous political divide between its Left and Right. They typically cast it as an epic struggle between the nation's Red and Blue States. However, this divide cuts deeper than mere politics. Religion in America also faces a contentious battle between liberal and conservative believers. Most assume that evangelical Christians represent the right side of that conflict, the praying arm of the Republican Party. However, a deep division between Left and Right also slices through Evangelical Protestantism. Not every Baptist votes a straight G.O.P. ticket.

The recent funeral of Coretta Scott King dramatically exposed this split within Evangelicalism. Here, many of the shining lights of the civil rights movement, such as the Rev. Joseph Lowery, co-founder of Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and famed Southern liberals such as Jimmy Carter, former president, one-time Southern Baptist and author of Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis, came to honor the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They also took advantage of a rare opportunity to criticize the current administration's policies and follies directly to the president's face. Bush, himself the darling of conservative Evangelicals, was left shaking his head, perhaps astonished at their audacity (although I'm convinced that Mrs. King would've joined her voice to their chorus, if possible). Or perhaps he was puzzled by the fact that not every Evangelical Protestant completely agreed with him. The collections of Gospel Music under consideration here are a product of this divided Evangelical culture. Taking Gloryland, a collection of bluegrass gospel from Time Life, and Gospel Music, an anthology of black gospel, together highlights some aspects of this division within evangelical Christianity and suggests some of its roots.

Perhaps the most basic contrast between the two albums lies in the artists themselves. Gospel Music features performances from well-known black gospellers, such as Mahalia Jackson and the Blind Boys of Alabama, and some not-as-well-known singers, such as The Violinaires. Gloryland, at the same time, is a collection of white bluegrass musicians like Ricky Skaggs. Gospel Music offers, as producer Joel Dorn calls it, music from "the epicenter of the core of…Black American Music." As such, it reveals certain aspects of African-American belief and practice. Gospel is music born in the midst of communal worship. Its instrumentation tends to reflect those roots. Pipe organs, pianos, mass choirs and soaring soloists, such as the incomparable Jackson, bring these treasures from the black church powerfully to life. The album even features some preaching by the Rev. James Cleveland. The bluegrass on Gloryland, on the other hand, is a secular form (born in rural Kentucky and popularized by the late, great Bill Monroe on jukeboxes across the nation) applied to such traditional hymns as "Were You There?" and "The Old Rugged Cross." In bluegrass's early days, its mandolins, guitars and banjos were typically considered more suitable for the home than for the church. If Gospel Music was born in the black churches, Gloryland seems to have sprung from the front porches of Southern whites. Here, the church is important, but it carries no more weight than the private home. This dichotomy between communal worship and apparently private devotion also marks the singers' harmonies on each album. Those on Gospel Music tend to emphasize the interplay between the voices; those on Gloryland often, but not exclusively, exist to support the soloist.

Not only do the instruments and harmonies on each album reflect some basic differences in their approaches to Christianity, but the lyrics also capture a division between gospel's more communal understanding of the faith (what Dr. King called the "beloved community") and a more individual-centered reading of the gospel seemingly expressed by bluegrass. Perhaps it is no coincidence that "Precious Lord," the first track of Gospel Music, prominently features the word "everybody," while the first track of Gloryland is "Somebody Touched Me." A more profound illustration of this divide can be uncovered by comparing two other tracks from the albums. In "Strange Man," from Gospel Music, Dorothy Lee Coates couches her conversion experience firmly within the experiences of other women in the Bible who encountered this strange man, Jesus, and found salvation. For Coates, salvation puts her in the company of others who have been saved. On Gloryland's "Rank Stranger," on the other hand, Ralph Stanley finds that conversion has reduced his family and friends to mere strangers to him. He is alone in a hostile, unbelieving world. Other people are not to be trusted.

It is worth speculating that this basic division between a communal vision of Christianity versus a more individualistic one might be at the root of the political battle that erupted at the King funeral. One could see how an understanding of Christ calling us to work together, coupled with African-Americans' history of oppression, would find expression in Gospel Music and foster an interest in working together to achieve civil rights. It would also favor a liberal political agenda sympathetic to those goals, such as the New Deal or the Great Society. On the other hand, bluegrass gospel's vision of the believer in personal relationship with Christ and unwilling to put his or her trust in others, can be seen to foster the type of distrust in big government (and of the "expense" involved in securing civil rights) that fiscal conservatives have traditionally promoted. It is no surprise that poor whites, often excluded from political power in this country and the first to embrace bluegrass, have never successfully mounted their own movement. Consider the unions' poor record in overcoming the mistrust of the Southern working class. In any case, it is clear that the conflict revealed at Coretta Scott King's funeral wasn't simply a political one. It was the product of a deep conflict rooted in two very different visions of Evangelical Protestantism and its impact on the world, a division expressed in both of these albums. Scott Hoffman [buy Gloryland] [buy Gospel Music]