I recently purchased J.Period’s phenomenal mixtape, The Best of Lauryn Hill: Fire and Water. Those of us still searching for L. Boogie as the enigmatic Ms. Hill performs across the country, occasionally with the reunited Fugees, can find solace in this collection of her group, solo, and guest appearances from the early 90’s to now. Hill hosts the two-disc collection, giving us insight into her inspiration and development as a person and an artist.
In one remembrance, entitled the Message Music Interlude, Hill shares her reasons for rapping. She explains, “‘I think I chose to become a rapper because I had a lot of things I wanted to say and I wanted to make sure that it reached the people.” Hill continues, “At that point, R&B music wasn’t being used to make any statements. It was hip-hop. Hip-hop had Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, you had Eric B. and Rakim. And this was message music. I think that I kind of was inspired by a lot of these groups to start rhyming and have a somewhat conscious statement, a conscious message.”
Lauryn Hill intentionally chose the medium of hip-hop music over R&B to express to “the people” messages of justice, hope, and freedom, despite and through oppressive circumstances. As a Black Christian who considers himself a liberationist, her reflection led me to ask the question: Why not express protest through gospel music? After all, traditionally, black “sacred” music has inspired black protest movements in North America from enslavement to the present. Or has it?
Several weeks ago, I attended the annual meeting of the National Black Presbyterian Caucus (NBPC) in Charlotte, North Carolina themed “Stride Toward Freedom: Justice and the Gospel.” My wife Neema and I led a workshop and spoke on a panel for the event, which featured preaching and lectures by AME Bishop Vashti McKenzie, Presbyterian pastor Dr. Karen Brown, and Dr. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity UCC in Chicago.
Wright shared two lectures with us, the second offering a seething critique of the Black Church’s lack of progressive politics past and present. On the one hand, he lamented that many Black churches have yet to purge themselves of white supremacist ideology such that in our worship experiences, we would rather sing European hymns, anthems, and Westernized Negro spirituals than claim our black heritage through the singing of gospel music.
Later in Wright’s lecture, however, in an ironic twist, he expressed frustration with the theology of contemporary gospel music. He asked, “Who determines the theology for the Black Church today?” Responses ranged from Rush Limbaugh to T.D. Jakes to Tavis Smiley. Yet Wright’s response caught many of us by surprise.
“Musicians,” he replied, generating a pause in the room.
He then explained that a good number of mega-church pastors and black televangelists began their careers as musicians who then shifted to pastoral ministry. Donnie McClurkin, Marvin Winans, and Jakes himself, he argued, all began their careers as musicians without proper theological education who through song and sermon lead millions of black worshipers astray with an over-emphasis on false notions of biblical prosperity, a theological individualism borrowed from the religious right, and a failure to acknowledge the socio-political implications of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Wright was particularly annoyed with Donald Lawrence’s Prayer of Jabez inspired ” Bless Me (Enlarge My Territory).”
Yet, interestingly enough, the very “traditionalists” that Wright derided earlier in his lecture make a similar critique of the lack of theological substance in gospel music. Who would disagree that a traditional hymn offers more depth than the average top 10 hit on gospel radio? If Wright’s critiques are valid, then the road to sonic liberation seems to be clouded by the white supremacy of traditional hymns and the conservative theology of contemporary gospel.
What is the progressive Black Christian to do?
While reclaiming the spirituals is one strategy, and Africanizing the hymns and anthems of the church is another, where are the contemporary expressions of black “sacred” music that uplift an understanding of salvation inclusive of theologies of liberation? Where are the songs that critique a church and society that idolizes whiteness, maleness, wealth, and heterosexuality? Where is the music that brings a gospel of hope to the downtrodden, despite our institutionalized oppression? It is disappointing that A Black Theology of Liberation seems not to have influenced the medium of music that informs the theology of most black Christians. Or has it?
The Best of Lauryn Hill reminded me that the Spirit of God that inspired enslaved Africans in America to sing “Go Down Moses (Let My People Go),” “I’m On the Battlefield (For My Lord),” and “We Shall Overcome,” still lives, and is moving in the brush harbor of hip-hop.
Hill’s catalogue reveals that her music is a wellspring of black liberation theology, as this “Abyssinian Street Baptist” is “out to change the focus from the richest to the brokest.”
Where else but in hip-hop can we find a Womanist collaborator like Common express openness to a feminine vision of the second coming? (“Waiting for the Lord to rise, I looked into my daughter’s eyes, and realized I’m a learn from her/ The Messiah might even return through her, ” title track from Be). Where else but hip-hop can we find a postmodern prophet like Jill Scott taking and holding on to her freedom, representing God’s glory along the way (“Golden,” Beautifully Human)? There are even Christian hip-hop artists who aren’t afraid to see the political as spiritual, as hip-hop Jeremiahs Grits wonder if a balm exists in the Gilead of a racist post-civil rights United States, “Black man, wake up/Black man, feel me/ Dr. King said we would overcome/ Will we?” (“If I,” Dichotomy B).
To be fair, not all of hip-hop is concerned with liberation, but neither is all of gospel music. Yet, hip-hop music seems to have created a space for the social gospel in a way that contemporary gospel music has not. Hip-Hop psalmists understand as James Cone did 35 years ago that “Any message that is not related to the liberation of the poor in a society is not Christ’s message. Any theology that is indifferent to the theme of liberation is not Christian theology.” I’m sure that hip-hoppers worldwide would say”Amen” to that.
VCF
July 25, 2005 at 11:56 am
Love it love ya. question I’m a learn from her or should that be a limb from her (I look into my daughter’s eyes and realized…) this falls into an article in the Sunday Constitution which i forgot to bring regarding the black men and the church. decrying (I think that’s the word I want) the church as merely a place for merchandising the church not for elevating the people only the pastor and definitely not a place for black men!!
Mama Mary Taliba
July 25, 2005 at 7:43 pm
Heavy!
Looking at this whole hip-hop/music thing differently, perhaps we should use the same amount of fervor to push back on the ‘prosperity-only’ Gospel artists that we use to push back on the ‘guns, gangs and shake-dat-thang’ hip-hop artists. But wait … it’s hard to market liberation in a world tettering on the axis of conspicuous consuption!
July 29, 2005 at 2:07 am
Props to my boy VCF for allowing God to use you and your partner to create a means to talk about this. Unfortunately, I don’t listen to a lot of “secular” music, which is really a shame because I have a 16 year old daughter who thrives in it. So on that front I am a bit ignorant. (Does Lauren Hill sing gospel or contemporary gospel or hip hop or a combination of all of this on this CD?)
The music that I do listen to, 95% (or higher) of it is so called Gospel music. But now when I think about it, even as I typed the words on the screen, I realize that what I am listening to is not “gospel” music because most of it is not speaking to any kind of liberation. I guess I could push the envelope and say that some of the artists I listen to could be deemed liberative – but again that’s a stretch. In that regard, I don’t know what to call it – perhaps Jesus music – but then that too commands a definition. I don’t have the energy.
I remember riding with VCF one day and he told me of a concert he and Neema attended on Candler’s campus, remember Vic? And the music, though not deemed traditional gospel music, was liberating for him and spoke to a god that we say exist but allows us to continue to live in such termoil -or was that the artist whose CD you copied for me that I have not yet listened to (oops!).
At any rate, one must first understand her/himself, the God s/he says s/he serves, bring those two things into community with the community and society at large in order to determine what is liberating for her/him or not. Until then, one finds her/himself going around in a vicious and senseless circle and getting no where fast.
You say, “Yet, hip-hop music seems to have created a space for the social gospel in a way that contemporary gospel music has not”. I think part of the reason this is is because the hip-hop artist is not trying to get church’s to sing their songs. They speak to a much larger community, unfortunately. They can say some things without restraint or fear of backlash from “the religious community.”
I think that it is only when we get our minds out of the box in relation to God, believe that God is bigger than our Sunday morning shout (whether whooping and hollering or slain in the spirit as way lay on the sanctuary floor) and trust that God is not offended by various and diverse ways of worship and praise, that true “Gospel” artists can emerge and speak to the true needs of the least of these.
I am not knocking Donnie and Yolanda and others such as them – I think most of their music has a good message, but there are others out there who want to worship and praise God in a different way – not better or worse – but because our minds or so closed, they have to use other outlets to express liberation.
July 29, 2005 at 10:53 pm
Good article, I always did feel uncomfortable singing that pretty song “enlarge my territory” in church. People were about to shout off of it, and I am thinking, this is about getting stuff, not about being free.
My dad always told me, if a church wants to grow big, the pastor should be able to sing. That singing would put the pastor over the top. Even my traditonal dad noticed the importance of a singing “preach and teach.”
I rarely listen to gospel music nowadays. Wright made an excellent point about gospel music as setting the agend for black theology. People will often quote the song words as if it was scripture.
July 29, 2005 at 10:54 pm
Good article, Leon. I’ve never really thought about it in those terms, but
musicians are a strong influence and their messages do often set a tone.
For some, gospel music is the entire worship experience as they may never
actually set foot in a church.
When we hear songs talking about “enlarge my territory”, that is unsettling.
There is not much liberation or social change in what I hear. It’s all
about praising “Him” (that patriarchal stuff) and getting your blessing.
July 29, 2005 at 10:55 pm
I do agree that a lot of Gospel music lacks theological substance but I attribute that to the listeners and the artist. Just like a Sunday sermon, the music is designed to reach a broad spectrum of people experiencing a abroad array of circumstances. True, there are too many “name it and claim it” ministries out there that do lead people astray and God will judge those leaders accordingly. But people must seek God for themselves. Then you are not easily lead astray by fluffy messages because you can go to the Bible for yourself and God will speak to you concerning things before you even hear the word of the preacher. Most people in churchdom do not desire the meat of the scripture and do not generally support groups that put it out there nor do they gravitate toward preachers and prophets that speak unadultered truth.
As far as the author’s comment on Black’s affinity toward European hymns, we have no cultural identity in this country totally void of European influence. Second, I feel we are all cheated by trying to put everything in a box. I am a Christian man that is also a musician. I am not a gospel artist, I am an artist that believes the gospel message. I have opinions on politics and a wide range of other issues and I feel free to share them in my music. The problem is the genre classification in America. If music stores stocked albums by artist name only, which they do in some countries, a person would pick up an album and know by the end of it whether God was in it. God doesn’t just use church choirs and singing pastors to do his work. And there is more ministry than preaching the ressurection of Jesus Christ on every record one makes. People who are already saved know the truth. Some gospel songs are geared toward believers struggles after the cross. Others are evangelic tools to get people to the cross. Every ministry is not the same.
As far as politics. God doesn’t expect his people to live aloof to what is going on in this world. There is a false perception that if you are a real Christian you are supposed to step back and ignore everything but the church. What that does is put God in a box and even scoff at God. I see it on reality tv shows. When a Christian wins, others are furious because they expected the christian to be a pacifist pawn in their game. We can’t be the head and not the tail if we don’t participate in our own destiny.
Finally, that liberation theology the author speaks about. It is in the music. But remember that the industry controls what gets pub. Most people that put that message in their music don’t get a record deal or they don’t get the rotation that nonsencical artist get. How much pub is Lauryn Hill getting since her MTV unplugged album? People called her crazy, etc. That’s what happens when you step out into the deep. Most people can’t get with you anymore. Sadly, thats a risk that most gospel artist are not willing to take.
August 22, 2005 at 5:40 pm
Excellent critique of today’s gospel and hip-hop culture, there is definetly a need for the African American Church to began to critique itself from within. Pastors like T.D. Jakes, Dollar, and many others have done to the church what people like Puff Daddy and Jermaine Dupree have done to hip hop. Therefore, we must continue to elvate and permeate the consciousness of our people through articles and discussions such as this one.
Nevertheless, the battle is that entertainment sells and intellectualism does not!
April 6, 2012 at 12:12 pm
[…] time ago, I wrote a post for a previous blog, Gospel Music as Message Music,where I argued that one contemporary musical space that reclaims the protest tradition of the Negro […]
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May 17, 2014 at 11:21 am
[…] time ago, I wrote a post for a previous blog, Gospel Music as Message Music,where I argued that hip-hop is one contemporary musical space that reclaims the protest tradition […]
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