African American Hymnody

Related Authors and Composers:

Doris Akers
Richard Allen
Lucie Campbell
Cleavant Derricks
Thomas A. Dorsey
James Weldon Johnson
John Rosamond Johnson
C.P. Jones
Kenneth Morris
Richard Smallwood
Charles A. Tindley 

See also:

Fisk Jubilee Singers
Hampton Singers
Gospel Hymns & Sunday School Songs
Spirituals

Thomas Cooper, The African Pilgrim’s Hymns (ca. 1820).

Recommended Resources:

Wendell P. Whalum, “Black hymnody,” Review & Expositor, vol. 70, no. 3 (August 1973), pp. 341–355: R&E

Alfred Adolphus Pinkston, Lined Hymns, Spirituals, and the Associated Lifestyle of Rural Black People in the United States, dissertation (University of Miami, 1975).

Irene V. Jackson-Brown, “Afro-American song in the nineteenth century: A neglected source,” The Black Perspective in Music, vol. 4, no. 1 (1976), pp. 22–38.

Wyatt Tee Walker, Somebody’s Calling My Name: Black Sacred Music and Social Change (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1979).

Portia K. Maultsby, Afro-American Religious Music: A Study in Musical Diversity, Papers of the Hymn Society, vol. 35 (Springfield, OH: Hymn Society, 1983): HathiTrust; revised as “The use and performance of hymnody, spirituals, and gospels in the black church,” Readings in African American Church Music and Worship (2001), pp. 77–98.

Eileen Southern, “Hymnals of the black church,” The Black Christian Worship Experience (Atlanta: ITC, 1987, rev. 1992).

Melva Wilson Costen, “Published hymnals in the Afro-American Tradition,” The Hymn, vol. 40, no. 1 (Jan. 1989), pp. 7–13: HathiTrust

Melva Wilson Costen, “Singing praise to God in African American worship contexts,” African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, ed. Gayroud Wilmore (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1989), pp. 392–403.

C. Eric Lincoln & Lawrence H. Mamiya, “The performed word: Music and the Black church,” The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham: Duke University, 1990), pp. 346–381.

Jon Michael Spencer, Black Hymnody: A Hymnological History of the African-American Church (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992).

Bernice Johnson Reagon, We’ll Understand It Better By and By: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1992).

Horace Clarence Boyer, How Sweet the Sound: The Golden Age of Gospel (Washington, D.C.: Elliott & Clark, 1995).

Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News in Bad Times, 25th Anniversary Ed. (NY: Limelight Editions, 1997).

Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 3rd Edition (New York, 1997).

Don Lee Whtie, “Hymnody of the African American church,” Readings in African American Church Music and Worship (Chicago: GIA, 2001), pp. 185-197: Amazon

Bernice Johnson Reagon, If You Don't Go, Don't Hinder Me: The African American Sacred Song Tradition (University of Nebraska, 2001): Amazon

James Abbington, “African American congregational song,” New Songs of Celebration Render, ed. C. Michael Hawn (Chicago: GIA, 2013), pp. 71–101: Amazon

James Abbington, “If it had not been for the Lord on my side: Hymnody in African American churches,” Readings in African American Church Music and Worship, vol. 2 (Chicago: GIA, 2014), pp. 129–150: Amazon

Robert Marovich, A City Called Heaven: Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015).

Stephen M. Newby, Jocelyn R. Wallace & Vernon M. Whaley, “African American sacred music and black hymnody,” Hymns and Hymnody, vol. 3 (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019), pp. 134–151.

Melva Wilson Costen, “African American hymnals,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology:
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/a/african-american-hymnals