... instance because, without such a study, the gaps between the conceptual frames provided by existing studies of black sacred music, his own comparisons of regional styles of lining out, and the issue of interrelations between lining out and other black music genres seem too wide. In the lining-out hymns...

... of Christianity among African Americans. Although the consistent importance of speech rhythms to black music is clear at least as far back as nineteenth-century congregational singing, the specifics of the African and Anglo-American origins of speech rhythms are not as clear. African influences on black music...

... predilection toward speech-like song and its complement, song-like speech, as a deceptively simple means of evoking the divine presence. Two essays on black music by Olly Wilson underscore the interrelatedness of sound and movement not only in worship but in the whole of African-derived cultures. Walter Pitts...

...While the primary focus of this book is black Baptist ritual, its general significance extends to non-church forms and contexts that developed in the generations immediately following the ascendancy of Dr. Watts among black Baptists. The black music forms that emerged in the twentieth century—blues...

.... Morton's artistic development as a pianist, composer, and bandleader is traced. The book examines the complexities of racial identity for Morton and his circle, his belief in voodoo, his relationships with women, his style of performance, and his roots in black musical traditions....

... of Isaac Watts's “system of praise” for the evolution of black musical identity. The book presents a new interpretation of rhythmic styles in lining out and other black music genres from the period between 1800 and 1970. Dr Watts hymns African influences on lining out adaptability of literacy illiteracy...

...Musicologists have acknowledged the importance of speech rhythms to black music from the blues forward, but the focus of the analysis has not explained their primacy. The obscurity of the hymns—despite their affinity to the spirituals that have been reinvented as a concert form—typifies the hidden...