Three Black Gospel Music Experts on Preparing, Teaching, and “Being” in the African American Aural-Oral Tradition

Abstract

The purpose of this multiple case study was to gather musical and nonmusical perspectives from three experts on teaching Black gospel music in the African American aural-oral tradition. Research questions included: (a) What is the process Black gospel music experts engage in when preparing for and teaching gospel music in the aural-oral tradition? (b) In the view of Black gospel music experts, how does race intersect with the preparation, teaching, and performance of gospel music? (c) How do Black gospel music experts advocate for incorporating gospel music into public school vocal music programs? Participants were purposively selected, and data collection included observations, researcher-singer participation, and multiple interviews. Expert agreement emerged regarding teaching processes as a nonmusical “state of being” deeply infused with cultural, community, and spiritual values. Rehearsals were uninterrupted musical experiences with limited nonverbal instruction made possible from robust aural-oral immersion preparation. While participants insisted race was not a prerequisite for engagement in gospel music, they agreed the influence and mediation of race plays an active role, citing the proliferation of anti-Blackness in the academy as foremost among the barriers to rigorous preparation to teach Black gospel music. Experts advocated for teaching gospel music in schools to offer students the opportunity to participate in the accessible, inclusive, participatory, and communal experience available in gospel music.

Music represented a means of survival and preservation of cultural identity for enslaved Africans forced to become African Americans (Southern, 1997). Gospel music emerged in the Black church as a new sacred musical form and declaration of “black selfhood” (Williams-Jones, 1995) that simultaneously reflected cultural, spiritual, textual, and musical products (Wise, 2002, p. 310). Unique to and reflective of its community, gospel music was distinguished by its expressive practices that historically resisted the norms, principles, and aesthetics of dominant Eurocentric worship (Maultsby, 1983; Walker, 1984). From its inception during the Great Depression as “good news in bad times” (Heilbut, 1971/2002, p. 332), gospel music is a synthesis of its musical predecessors both sacred and secular, urban and rural, retaining influence from slave utterances, the spiritual, blues, and jazz (Burnim & Maultsby, 2006; Walker, 1979). Despite scholarship establishing foundational understandings of historical context, cultural power and influence, musical characteristics, and performance practice (Boyer, 1979, 1995; Reagon, 2001; Shelley, 2019; Strayhorn, 2011), teaching gospel music is not well understood.

Resources that define how to teach gospel music in the aural-oral tradition are not widely known or practiced among music educators, though their rich content help to define conducting style and gesture, the importance of listening and transcription to inform preparation, the role of accompaniment for instruction, gospel vocal pedagogy for solo singers, and group vocal technique.¹ Scholars are clear: Preparation for teaching in the aural-oral tradition prioritizes the use of recordings as the primary source for learning a song that requires multiple tiers of oral and aural proficiencies to memorize parts. Memorization of parts is also necessary for the instructor to embody the score while teaching. “The notes, rather than being written on paper, are written over the entire body, behavior, and attitude of the teacher” (Barnwell, 2009, p. 13). Additionally, preparation and teaching require lead sheet literacy, a repertoire of intuitive and improvisatory conducting gestures, adaptation of vocal technique, freedom in expression, and stylistic accompaniment (Turner, 2009). Still, opportunities for students to directly engage with this pedagogical knowledge remain at the margins of the academy.

Anti-Blackness in the Conservatory

Historically, the inclusion of gospel music as an academic subject in college and university curricula has required further justification to be granted standing, merit, and financial support while remaining relegated to an additive, peripheral role (Dilling, 1995; Johnson, 2012; Reagon, 2001; Young, 2005). Cultural disregard for what is Black, termed “anti-Blackness,” is embedded within educational discourse and shapes practice and policy (Dumas, 2016; Dumas & ross, 2016). Anti-Blackness in the music conservatory surfaces in the centering of curriculum and pedagogy that reifies Western European art music, henceforth referred to as WEAM (Coppola et al., 2021), and the written score (Ewell, 2020). In granting status, capital, and privilege to what is White, what is Black becomes subordinated, despised, possessed, and subjugated (Bell, 2013; Harris, 1993). Scholars illustrate how anti-Blackness exists in the reasons given for omissions of Black music, from conservatory mindsets and unsubstantiated misconceptions that singing gospel music damages the voice to systemic perceptions that gospel music, as a folk tradition, lacks serious pedagogy and technique and is unworthy of academic standing (Jackson-Brown, 1990; Johnson, 2012). Jazz studies have received greater attention, yet some argue its inclusion through a Eurocentric frame folds it into Whiteness instead of through its foundational Afrocentric lens (Russonello, 2020; Sarath, 2018).

Whether preservice music teachers have sufficient opportunities to learn music in the aural-oral tradition in a nonadditive manner is unclear. Eurocentricity and the inherent Whiteness of teacher education is well documented (Aronson et al., 2020; Sleeter, 2017) and extends to music teacher education (Bradley, 2015; Hess, 2018; Koza, 2008). Music education fosters “exclusionary paradigms” in presenting curriculum and pedagogy to students that continue to reify WEAMs (Kindall-Smith et al., 2011). Preservice teachers who learn to teach or learn to sing themselves primarily through musical scores, both congruent with values centered in WEAMs, may be fearful or even reject more spontaneous, unfamiliar aural-oral musical forms in which they were given minimal instructional models. As a result, Black gospel music remains underrepresented in curricula despite standards from the National Association of Schools of Music and the National Association for Music Education to prompt all music educators to use, interact with, and know Black music in their pedagogy and methods classes (Sands, 1996).

Furthermore, the influence and mediation of race intersects in one's teaching and learning of gospel music as concerns over ownership, qualification, authenticity, and exoticization prompt fear and avoidance. White teachers connect race with the ability to teach gospel music, expressing fears of inadequacy, believing that their background has deemed them ineffective (Turner, 2009). “I can't offer you that because I'm not black” (Marti, 2012, p. 165). While the psychological toll of being discouraged from bringing one's whole musical identity is consequential for Black students in classrooms for whom these traditions hold value (Clauhs & Pigott, 2021; Sarath, 2018), all students can benefit from immersion in gospel music (Deckman, 2013).

The problem of music educators receiving limited experience, models, and value for Black musical traditions in the aural-oral tradition is real. Alongside the urgency for them to gain highly developed competencies in musical traditions beyond WEAM, they must confront, examine, and address the influence of race in teaching marginalized musical styles and pedagogies. A research study looking closely at the pedagogy of teaching gospel music in the aural-oral tradition and its intersection with race is needed in music education.

Purpose and Research Questions

The purpose of this multiple case study was to gather musical and nonmusical perspectives from three experts on teaching Black gospel music in the African American aural-oral tradition. Research questions included: (a) What is the process Black gospel experts engage in when preparing for and teaching gospel music in the aural-oral tradition? (b) In the view of Black gospel experts, how does race intersect with the preparation, teaching, and performance of gospel music? (c) How do Black gospel music experts advocate for incorporating gospel music into public school vocal music programs? This research aims to provide understanding toward building music educators’ self-efficacy in teaching Black gospel music and expanding robust inclusion in music teacher education and, more broadly, music education.

Method

I used multiple case study design to examine teaching processes in a real-life, unique setting with detail and depth over a period of time, bound through the individual perspectives and across experts to dimensionalize pedagogy and compare for commonalities (Stake, 2006; Yin, 2017). I identified three gospel experts who represented critical case samples (Flyvbjerg, 2011) based on their expertise, reputation, and longevity in the field. I broadened the term “expert” to include participants’ roles as teachers who use a pedagogical approach to teach gospel music from their expertise gained through active participation as performers, conductors, singers, and players. Participants included: (a) Dr. Rollo Dilworth,² vice dean and professor of music education at Temple University and organist at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas; (b) Dr. Cassandra Jones,³ senior directress at Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church; and (c) Dr. J. Donald Dumpson,⁴ minister of music at Arch Street Presbyterian Church and the founder/artistic director of Philadelphia Heritage Chorale. Recruitment occurred through establishing connections with Dumpson and Jones and building upon a previous professional relationship with Dilworth. Sampling was purposive and represented maximum variation (Patton, 2015) to include one church director, one university professor, and one community choir director, all located in the urban center of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. All agreed to be named with the declared intention to: (a) appreciate and recognize their longevity, expertise, and credibility in the field of gospel music; (b) illustrate the unique settings and groups of people who sing gospel music; and (c) allow researchers and practitioners to identify experts for their own future study and practice in gospel music. The Temple University Institutional Review Board approved all protocols.

Data Collection

Data collection took place over a 3-month period from January through March of 2020. Sources included one-on-one interviews, rehearsal participation, audio recordings, and collection of artifacts including organizational and biographical information. I immersed myself as a singer-participant to contextualize ongoing and gathered knowledge of gospel pedagogy through self-experience and avoid being a distanced outsider/observer. Over the research period, I sang in weekly rehearsals and varied services with each choir, totaling more than 100 hours of time in rehearsal and church services. Because I was not able to take live field notes as an active participant in rehearsal, I recorded each rehearsal and took field notes from the recording. The three parameters of the research questions framed my observation foci.

I conducted two face-to-face interviews at least 1 hour long with each expert, and several informal interviews took place following rehearsal or in subsequent member-checking conversations. I compiled song titles in a listening library to widen my understanding of familiar artists, repertoire, and style that I extended into simple charts to identify form, harmonic structure, and construction of voice parts to delineate teaching sequence. The original intended period of participation included compiling video footage to capture visual components of gospel music. At the time of the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020, I had exceeded the number of hours planned for data collection with Drs. Dilworth and Jones, but I was unable to complete a full semester participation in choir with Dumpson or initiate the video component.

Data Analysis

I transcribed interviews and analyzed transcripts using open first-cycle coding and focused second-cycle coding (Miles et al., 2020). Phase 1 of data analysis included open coding to create an initial in vivo code list and use of peer coding to refine the initial code list. Phase 2 of data analysis included member checking, cross-case analysis, and verification of the data through secondary data sources. To establish trustworthiness, I incorporated regular feedback from experts on my analysis and engaged in discussions with long-term mentees of each expert to confirm findings for each participant (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

Positionality

As a White woman, I grew up attending a predominantly White church in the Presbyterian denomination. While I have attended many Black churches throughout my career, I do not claim to be an expert or insider on gospel music pedagogies or the cultural markers that influence it. Like many colleagues who have an affinity for gospel music, I endeavored to inform myself during my 17 years of teaching choir in urban settings where knowledge of gospel music was highly valued by my students. Upon completing an undergraduate degree in music education studies 20 years ago with no knowledge of how to teach gospel music, I sought to build skills through my students, colleagues, and community experts. While this time provided a baseline knowledge and allowed me to gain self-efficacy, the limitations of a full-time teaching schedule constrained my capacity for deeper immersion and more prolonged time with experts. In this study, my aim was to step back with humility from prior knowledge, remain open to new understandings, and bring fresh eyes to what I thought I knew.

Findings

Aligning with a multiple case study, I structured the case profile and findings for each expert to foreground their unique and independent themes for research questions 1 and 2. Common themes and findings for research question 3 are presented in the cross-case analysis and discussion.

Rollo Dilworth, Case Profile

The sound of the organ rises through the vast limestone sanctuary of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas on Sunday morning as Rollo Dilworth's feet dance across the pedals of the Hammond organ. As the nation's first Black Episcopal Church founded in 1792, the significance of playing here is not lost on Dilworth. At the podium at Temple University on Tuesday night, he stands before his beloved community choir the “Singing Owls,” expertly navigating the Poulenc Gloria, a Japanese folksong, and a gospel tune. On this evening, Dilworth's Credo enlivens souls, a haunting gospel setting of W. E. B. Dubois's words, “I believe in service, humble reverent service, from the blackening of boots to the whitening of souls.” These words speak to his essence, well placed at an institution that emerged as a night school offering educational access for working people. In his role as vice dean and professor of music education, he interacts with students pursuing degrees at every level, bringing his considerable experience from the academy and music education. He is affectionately called “The Black Mr. Rogers” by students in Carver Choir, a weekly university partnership with the neighborhood high school. As an advocate for the aural-oral tradition counting Dr. Ysaÿe Barnwell among his mentors, his journey began in St. Louis with two music teachers who were “both very intentional about making sure that I experienced both worlds, if you want to call it that: the classical and the gospel.”

“A Way of Being”

Dilworth characterized the aural-oral tradition as a “way of being” woven into the fabric of life, derived from early practices by enslaved Africans who communicated and preserved culture, customs, and knowledge through telling stories and creating art. For those enculturated into this way of being, the ear becomes acute at processing information and communication, emphasizing how teaching and learning in this way can be difficult for those not enculturated. “We think of it as a thing you do. But it is a way of living, and it is who you are, and . . . that's hard to quantify.” Being in the aural-oral tradition requires different skills than those traditionally associated with being musically literate. Dilworth advocated for a recalibrated definition of music literacy wherein the teacher is the score, responsible for communicating and embodying the music with their presence. For example, Dilworth teaches the first 16 bars of the song without a score, directing students to “sing what they hear, not what they see.” When a musical score is available, it is inherently limited in capturing complexity and nuance. He emphasized the vulnerable and liberating experience for students learning music in the aural-oral tradition because one is not “confined or trapped by those dots and dashes on the page.”

When one teaches gospel music in the aural-oral tradition, all are invited to “come in their own way,” which Dilworth illustrated through differently held perspectives on vocal blend. To “blend” in Western choral music requires conformity, order, replication, and uniformity: a subversion of self to one's neighbor and the ensemble. The opposite is true in gospel music, where singers are asked and expected to bring their whole voice to the music, an audible expression of their unique identity, emotion, and spirituality. This valuing for each person to freely share their sound nurtures a freedom of expression and vulnerability that connects neighbors, reinforced harmonically and psychologically through close, parallel, tertian harmony. Further, the dual value for individual and group is present in the musical structure of the “special chorus,” where contrapuntal lines coexist undergirded by the same chord progression.

“Who Has the Right to Tell Someone Else's Story?”

Dilworth acknowledged the limitations in how students and teachers who are not of African descent connect to what he called “culturally specific themes” in gospel music. In his view, the hesitation to include gospel music stems from a lack of preparation or fear of making a mistake and causing offense. He related these concerns around qualification and racial ownership with his own experience of being questioned in his interaction with WEAMs. “How dare I teach and conduct the Brahms Requiem. . . . I've actually been challenged by people . . . they think I should stay in my lane.” For Dilworth, the challenge of his qualification as a Black director implies that possessing European descent guarantees readiness and begs the question, “Who has the right to tell somebody else's story?” He has always been baffled by teachers who ask him if they are “allowed” to teach gospel music. “I don't think choral directors need permission. I think what they need more than permission is encouragement.” In his view, studying gospel music is no different than exploring Mozart's Requiem. “I've never seen a piece of gospel music that has a little footnote at the bottom of page that says ‘for Black people only.’” What changes, he said, is the mindset brought to the music.

Dilworth recommended that teachers devote time to rigorous preparation and guard against the common assumption that gospel music is less serious or sophisticated and therefore requires less time. “That's where teachers get into a lot of trouble because that particular mindset is something that can unfortunately be communicated to the singers in nonverbal ways that will take credibility away from the teacher.” Signs of personal bias appear when teachers devote less time to its preparation, place it as an afterthought in the program, refer to it as “happy clappy music,” or fail to engage culture bearers who might enrich study and performance. When a White teacher experiences objections to singing gospel music by Black students, Dilworth attributed this to a failure by the teacher to engage deeply in the work, perhaps derived from attitudes held by many in the United States and upheld by university music schools.

Dilworth was firm that preservice music teachers are not prepared adequately in the music of the African diaspora. Rigorous preparation for teacher-conductors (his term) begins with separating oneself from a Western classical lens to “start afresh.” Overlaying a Western classical lens on gospel style is dangerous, as each were formed in very different traditions. “The sound doesn't start with Bel Canto Western classical tone and evolve into more of a chest voice. It's the other way around.” Further, applying Western classical labels to gospel music positions Eurocentric ideology as the measuring stick or “tool by which you navigate your way through gospel music.” He shared wisdom from Ysaÿe Barnwell, who first taught him that referring to music sung in the African American aural-oral tradition as “rote singing” disparages its complexity. “Rote” implies replication or mimicking, void of the nuance and subtle delivery of pitch, tone color, vocal inflection, rhythm, diction, body language, expression, and emotion. And when non-Black teachers struggle to “tell the story,” Dilworth suggested filling in cultural and musical gaps through immersive experiences of prolonged engagement and humble relationships with culture bearers, making special note to recruit students who play, direct, and conduct to share power and expertise.

Last, while gospel music remains a tool for Black people to combat discrimination, oppression, and marginalization, Dilworth affirmed that all people connect with what he called “humanly universal themes” of love, joy, hope, community, unity, inspiration, and perseverance. While students and teachers may not be able to connect on a spiritual or cultural level, Dilworth insisted the human experience is the mutual entry point for diverse communities. “A 6-year-old gets it.” The human resonance is ultimately, in his words, “why people do it.”

Cassandra Jones, Case Profile

Her signature gray braids shine and wave gloriously from the Kimmel Center stage as she conducts the more than 100-voice Enon Mass Choir in the annual “A Soulful Christmas.” The sound and presence of the choir envelops the room from the moment they begin, purple gowns flowing. It is clear “the Doc” is here. Senior Directress Cassandra W. Jones, an African American woman, is in her 22nd year of leading the massive music ministry at Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, a Philadelphia institution in the Black community. Attended by 10,000 people weekly, Jones oversees the direction of nine choirs and mentors 17 emerging conductors. “Doc” holds singers to a high standard while ensuring they feel loved. In rehearsal, singers are “prayed in,” and before a note is sung she asks, “Hearts and minds clear?” Sunday morning is no different, as she walks the choir loft at 5:15 a.m. to “pray over” every choir member's seat. She is a native of North Philadelphia and self-proclaimed “church girl” known to practice music on the treadmill or be caught in a boisterous conducting gesture at a red light. Nothing compares to seeing Jones at the front of Enon on Sunday in one of her colorful ceremonial robes. “I direct hard in practice but not hard like I do when I'm really in service.” A mentee of Jones described her as “a builder of leaders” with a “sense” about people that reaches beyond music. As a lifelong educator who spent 48 years in public schools as a physical education teacher and administrator, she is well versed in schooling and youth. She easily shifts between using the language of a former chief academic officer in Baltimore and Philadelphia to dancing and singing at Enon alongside eager 5-year-olds who gaze adoringly up at her small frame. The love she receives is returned through her captivating presence and charisma, or what she calls “the fun gift.”

A trailblazer in her own right, at age 22, Jones was among the first women invited to direct a Mass Choir in Mt. Sinai Holy Church of America in a field dominated by men. When Elder Parham, a man, first asked her to conduct a song, she said to him, “You know they don't let females direct.” When he insisted and introduced her as Sister Jones, she described audible snickering from the men: “What is she doing? What is this?” Her demonstration of vigor and excellence in that moment led to a convention performance and status as a leading directress in the field. “Everything else has been history.”

“Technically Correct” and “They Know I Care”

Excellence must drive teacher preparation in gospel music to focus on what Jones called being “technically correct,” defined as building deep, thorough knowledge through hours of aural immersion and intense study:

For Jones, her preparation is prayer and memorization. Twenty black, white, and green composition notebooks that she (and her colleagues) affectionately call “her books” contain her illustrations of every song she has directed. These pages are her physical map, a score. “There's always music . . . there's nothing that we can't figure out if we can hear it.” Each page is dedicated to a song, words annotated with corresponding note names to sketch melodic, textual, and dynamic nuance. The rhythm is in her head. “I don't score it like you, or a musician. But I have the notes, and I have the gift of knowing the rhythm.” Her combination of aural immersion physicalized into her process of transcription allows her to internalize all voice parts and is what she considers the necessary work. “You gotta score it because you got to know it.” Jones's aural knowledge was evident several times in rehearsal where I noted the accuracy of her ears in identifying harmonic structure. Though she describes herself as an “untrained” musician, I observed her aural fierceness surpass that of her “trained” musicians in her rhythm section one evening. “I don't know what the chord is called, but what you played is not it.”

Jones's memorization allows her to be in rehearsal hands-free, her ears and heart as the only tools to connect the choir “family.” She contrasted her choice to build relationships with other directors who focus more on the music than the people. The exchange is mutual: She gets to know them and opens herself to be known, garnering a level of trust and intimacy that allows her to push the choir to the next level. “People say, ‘How do you get all these people moving and doing all the things that you do?’ One, they know that I care. . . . They know I care about each individual. You can't fake that.”

Rehearsals are a continuous musical and connected conversation, the flow of support and love felt easily as participants nod along to Jones, laugh at her jokes, or respond to her calls. She is not afraid to be vulnerable and proximal. “I don't sing,” she says, but I observed her comfortably belt the tenor pitch while climbing the choir loft to admonish singers with the text or a gentle nudge to participate. “Where did he bring you from?” Her exhortations of the text interwoven into her teaching were persistent calls to the choir to respond (and sing) their answer. When the choir faded in energy, she sternly cried, “Lives are depending on hearing that word.” And “Did God just kinda go through the motions when he woke you up this morning? No. He woke you up. He didn't turn around and say, ‘Maybe I'll wake you up. Maybe I won't.’ No.”

Jones tied her intimate connection with her singers and collaborators to her freedom to be spontaneous, a fundamental element in Black worship. While she credited all spontaneity to her rhythm section, who hone her arrangements each week, I observed a lightning-fast, fluid shorthand of communication between all. Everyone knew each unique signal, clap, point, fist, and tiny physical movement that signaled melodic direction, repeats, cues, form, vamp, and so on. I was struck by the speed of response to each subtle, nonverbal gesture as the strongest evidence of the closeness between Doc and her choir.

“Your Background Does Not Disqualify You”

When asked why race matters in teaching gospel music, Jones referenced performances that lacked preparation and technical excellence as “just hands clapping and let's move on.” For Jones, those engaging with gospel music may bring their personal experiences with race relations, unconscious bias, and views of “what Black people bring to the table,” which contribute to viewpoints of gospel music as “less” instead of a complex, musical form that requires seriousness in preparation and expectations for quality.

For Jones, gospel music is too often selected, prepared, and performed in a way that displays a lack of true value for the music or the community from which it emerged. She advocated for teachers to examine their intentions and view of gospel music, especially because students want to know their music isn't being selected as a “check mark” but because their teacher has authentic value for their community and their music. “If it's a burden, you're not going to do it well, and that's what will come across.” When respect is given to preparation, Jones said, gospel music “cuts across racial barriers.”

During one interview, Jones and I discussed a mistake I made early in my career when I perceived that my Black students did not trust me because I was White. “I will stress over and over again, don't think that people won't receive you.” Doc pointed to Enon's reception toward me when I directed warm-ups at my first visit. “You came in prepared . . . not with a chip on your shoulder of knowing it all, you came in humble saying, ‘I'm going to share what I've given, what I know, but I also want to receive from you.’” Showing your “authentic self” is most important.

Jones contended race is not a prerequisite to engage with gospel music if one has taken the time to understand it in an equivalent manner with WEAMs, noting credible gospel performances from all-White choirs. Gospel music facilitates a connection between teachers and students who do not share racial or ethnic backgrounds, and she and her colleague Garland “Miche” Waller were insistent: “We've got a lot of Black people who may not excel in traditional gospel music.” When teachers ask her how to gain “ability” to teach gospel music, she directs them to study it as they would study baroque music. “It's the same thing.” She was clear that a teacher's background does not disqualify them from doing gospel music but was firm: “You have to be willing to put in the work.”

J. Donald Dumpson, Case Profile

The city lights sparkle as stories of how gospel music found a voice emanate from the walls of the historic Arch Street Presbyterian Church in downtown Philadelphia. As I enter rehearsal on that particular evening, singers surround Dumpson at the piano where he sits, a force guiding members of the Philadelphia Heritage Chorale (PHC) during this episode of music-making. He described members of PHC as “wonderful, down to earth people,” represented in varied ages and levels of music experience. Tonight, Edwin Hawkins's lyrics, “Ooh, child, things are gonna get easier” are soulfully shared throughout the chapel. In a moment, Dumpson builds a complex arrangement using his encyclopedic knowledge of melodies from 50 years of church music service, layering one voice over another with every repetition of the phrase “someday” without lifting a hand from the piano. The people sing in this space amid the palpable anxiety felt on the evening of March 9, 2020 (our last in-person rehearsal before the COVID-19 outbreak). Access is at the center of his work, commanding high expectations for the members of PHC, the choir he founded sitting before him that evening, to be “a conduit, an opening, a portal of access for people to have musical experiences that are often closed off to them . . . the Chorale offers a lift into possibilities.” For these singers, and for the members of the Jubilee Singers at Westminster Choir College that he also founded, he seeks to build a bridge that fosters access to the journey from familiar to unfamiliar, a fusion no more clearly illustrated than through the sound of his Sunday morning piano prelude. As congregants enter, they hear a sonority and artistry that merges the sounds of Frederic Chopin and Claude Debussy with the hymns of Rev. Charles Albert Tindley, the voicing of Rev. James Cleveland, and the soulful ministry of Pastor Shirley Caesar. Dumpson, an African American man, established “A Soulful Christmas” to expand individuals’ views of programming beyond artistic stereotypes that limit the inclusion of music borne of the African diaspora and build access to mainstream opportunities for African American musicians at major arts and educational institutions. Each year, more than 900 members of local church choirs are invited to perform at the Kimmel Center, a professionally acclaimed stage and home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, where they are exposed to and perform classical works by composers of African descent. Dumpson is always in service to gathered congregants, to his students, and to his singers, all of whom make up the people of Philadelphia, his native city.

Teaching Processes

“Dual Competency”

Central to Dumpson's teaching is what he termed “elevation” or “lift,” defined as expanded notions of musical belonging, ability, and possibility for both performer and audience. He aims to expand participants’ views and experiences of belonging through community singing, how they see themselves, and what is possible beyond what he termed “artistic stereotypes.” While Dumpson made use of and expressed value for the aural-oral tradition, he conveyed concern in its primary usage as one way of limiting the elevation he desires for singers. For Dumpson, competency in traditional music literacy skills empowers them to engage with the broad range of musical situations as he did. He described his undergraduate experiences as expansion and indoctrination with information not familiar to what he “knew as being at home with the music he shared.” Crediting Professors Harvey Wedeen and Natalie Hinderas with guiding him to make connections between his “home” musical lens and new insights (“lift”), his understanding of gospel music and spirituals expanded when he began making connections to his study of Mozart, Brahms, and Chopin. His intent is the same: to guide his singers in a merging of techniques to build what he called “dual competencies” where all music and ways of learning music coexist and merge to create something that lives musically. To that end, he engages choir members in musical competencies and practices beyond what their church music experience provides with exposure to classical composers of African descent such as Adolphus Hailstork, Hannibal Lokumbe, Undine Moore, Hale Smith, and William Grant Still, alongside arranged spirituals. He does not view this as assimilating into Whiteness but valuing and passing on music literacy that is historical, theoretical, and musical.

“It's Vulnerable”

In approaching gospel music, Dumpson advised teachers to allow the music to “pour into and open them” toward the possibilities of vulnerability with an expansive heart and ears. Gospel music holds power for connection, and the role of teacher is to be vulnerable and guide students toward the same openness. He agreed with descriptions of gospel music as expressive but stated, “Expression without vulnerability creates a very different outcome.” When vulnerability is present, barriers are more likely to be broken. “Singers are not outsiders trying to get in gospel music. It can be home.” In this sense, Dumpson might see the written page as a barrier toward greater connection. In every engagement with music, he guided participants toward an understanding of the story informing the music. For example, when working on an African American slave song, he generated conversations to bring the singers into a deeper connection with the essence and context related to where the music was borne. “Sing as if we are on the belly of the ship. Be intentional to sense time, space, pain through moans and groans. Bring your lens down to the earth, dig your hands in the soil.” He feels that it is very important to live in the space and energy of the music being cocreated and shared, characterizing the human voice as central in communicating the “sounds borne out of lived experiences” common in folk music. Indeed, Dumpson made clear that expressions from “despair to jubilation, deprivation to abundance live here,” with each musical repetition likened to a trance or mantra, growing in a momentum of hope with each iteration.

Intersection of Race and Teaching Gospel Music

In teaching gospel music, Dumpson advocated that teachers address engrained implicit and explicit biases toward what is valued and therefore taught in the academy, what he termed the “elephant in the room.” He proposed the academy privileges and assigns value to WEAMs in curricular decisions that exclude the content of gospel music in education. In privileging Western traditions, the academy marginalizes and excludes other musics, including those revealing the significant sounds borne in and out of the African diaspora. As a result, practices and values developed by music students lead to bias against non-Western music and shortcuts in preparing music from the African diaspora that avoid the awful history of the slave trade and journey through the middle passage. Dumpson suggested that historically, the values of the academy are rooted in fear of bold Black expression in music and the arts in general. Black gospel music, for instance, is “borne and formed and shaped in everyday life and worship . . . it just has a different aesthetic . . . it makes some people uncomfortable.” While religion can create discomfort or avoidance of gospel music, Dumpson associated this response with fear of Blackness, projections and associations with Black as tribal, and a perception of Black as “less than.” To illustrate, he compared Robert Ray's Gospel Mass alongside Franz Schubert's Mass in G and stated:

He noted similar contradictions regarding acceptance for “using our ears” when framed within Edwin Gordon's music learning theory or Zoltan Kodaly's methodology, yet the African American aural-oral tradition, a practice centered in aural-oral immersion, is not as free to stand alone as a pedagogy with similar credence or value. Given the messaging he described, Dumpson called on educators to challenge these value judgments and stereotypes.

Dumpson encouraged self-reflection on the way ability is assigned to music, contrasting assumptions made about his own competency in WEAMs. One may assume that Black students should sing the African American spiritual better because they are Black, which then leads to the conclusion that if you belong to another race, you will not sing it as well. “Because you're White you shouldn't be doing it. Because I'm Black I should be doing it.” Students of African descent may not have been exposed to singing spirituals or gospel music at all. In his work with directors who want to approach Black music with respect but who are not of African descent, he stated, “Each of us has agency to engage the musics of other cultures. We in America have the challenge of our unfortunate history of racism to contend with. Ultimately, it is my hope that honest exchanges with the music wins.”

Cross-Case Analysis and Discussion

Beyond findings around teaching, preparation, and performing Black gospel music in the aural-oral tradition, experts illuminated common nonmusical components that inform engagement with gospel music that I will now refer to as “Gospel pedagogy.” Gospel pedagogy includes the cultural and philosophical value system infused into every aspect of teaching gospel music, as described by these three experts. In this section, I also discuss how together they advocated for incorporating gospel music into public school programs, provided suggestions for navigating the intersections of race and fear in teaching gospel music, and proposed areas for transformation in music teacher education.

Gospel Pedagogy

A shining example of a teacher is the Black preacher (Emdin, 2017). Cultural, community, and spiritual norms and values permeate sermon delivery as the preacher invites congregant responses that propel self-expression over compliance. Meeting parishioners on their cultural and emotional turf, a preacher coconstructs learning in a teaching approach Emdin (2017) designates as “Pentecostal Pedagogy.” Similarly, the gospel music experts in this study infused these values into what they agreed was a “state of being” in the teaching of gospel music in the African American aural-oral tradition. As gospel music itself is defined as a cultural, spiritual, textual, and musical product (Wise, 2002), the experts’ teaching also embodies cultural values where liberation is the philosophical starting point. Music rooted in what Walker (1984) calls “cries for freedom” bursts with rebellion through improvisation and expression, epitomizing the social improvisation required historically, and is a reaction to a Eurocentric worship style that is “imitative of the dominant society and identifies with that which has no abiding interest and support for liberation of the oppressed” (Walker, 1979, p. 26). Just as the music demands liberation, creativity, and expression from any participant, the gospel experts’ teaching imbued emancipatory norms as they welcomed all, regardless of their ability or prior experience, not to conform but to “come in their own way.” Coming in their own way meant freedom and liberation, where one could (a) express who they are, represented in their unique vocal tone, to the group; (b) gain access to the musical experience by singing free from the restrictions of the physical page; (c) release deeply felt and personal emotions within a creative, flexible, and spontaneous musical form and space; (d) transcend their circumstances through textual themes of liberation; and (e) build closeness among neighbors through the bare exposure of self-expression.

The experts’ preparation also mirrored cultural value for the aural-oral study and transfer of art. And, because they centered aural-oral immersion to memorize parts and internalize musical nuance, all limited their verbal instruction to “be” in an uninterrupted musical experience with their singers. Each expert embodied nuance and feel through their individual presence and chosen instrument—Dumpson at the piano, Dilworth through vocal modeling with and without piano, and Jones in her physical presence and voice. All used piano accompaniment that mimicked a gospel rhythm section either directly (Dumpson and Dilworth) or through the use of an accompanist (Jones).

Sing Gospel Music in School

The experts advocated for the incorporation of gospel music in public school music programs. Gospel music taught in the aural-oral tradition allows Black students to “see themselves in the curriculum” (Dilworth) through a cultural art from their community, relevant not just for Black students to see, but for White students to know. Jones and Dilworth cautioned teachers to guard against “checking the box” when choosing a gospel song. Teachers must hold and, more importantly, show authentic value for gospel music and the community in which it was borne. Students will sense inauthentic intentions, lack of value, and, especially, inadequate preparation. The experts advocated for the incorporation of gospel music into school music programs because of its inherent ability to (a) foster self-expression; (b) nurture connection and vulnerability within a group; (c) offer an accessible, inclusive, and participatory experience in music; and (d) normalize open dialogue about issues of race, bias, ownership, and how value is assigned to music.

Liberatory values shine through in the experts’ demonstration of the “participatory ethos” of gospel music (Shelley, 2019) and cultural value for “free expression and group participation” (Maultsby, 1983). While many music education systems perpetuate meritocracy in requiring music literacy skills and prior experience to participate, gospel pedagogy breaks free from these constraints in favor of open, participatory, accessible, and communal musical experience that invites all to enter in. The experts prioritized expression in selecting repertoire that connected to the world of their choir members and created arrangements that suited the needs of their singers. How might practitioners and students alike benefit and transform from what Dilworth described as the “inclusive, uninhibited, liberating themes and practices” of gospel pedagogy?

Race and Fear

While the experts insisted gospel music is open to all, they agreed the influence of race mediates its pursuit. Despite the broadened notion of race presented in my question without specifying which dimension among its varied roles, perceptions, and nuance, the experts responded by targeting the positioning and devaluing of gospel music and aural-oral traditions in society and the academy as a potent barrier to rigorous engagement. Each of the experts described their personal experience with the academy and teachers perceiving “Black” (Black music, aural-oral traditions) as less, affirming the scholarship of anti-Blackness (Dumas, 2016; Dumas & ross, 2016). All cited evidence of anti-Blackness in (a) shortcuts taken by music educators with Black musics they would not take with WEAMs; (b) lowered expectations for quality; and (c) the systemic treatment of Black music as peripheral.

The experts cited fear as a barrier to engagement with gospel music in the classroom. Aside from the vulnerability of teaching in what might be an unfamiliar practice of the aural-oral tradition, fears of race and religion intertwine as persons contend with their connection to Blackness and religiosity. The experts did not characterize religious belief as a prerequisite for participation in gospel music, recognizing it as both a sacred and secular form, and leaned more into its cultural value while leaving faith as a deep possibility, but not a requirement. Yet fear might prompt teachers/conductors to rewrite or omit “Jesus” from gospel lyrics, applying the racially charged double standard to Black sacred music not given to WEAMs that experts cautioned against. Additionally, such an omission devalues the cultural, social, and historical significance of Jesus as a symbol of liberation in the Black community “to overcome oppressive and unjust conditions” (Holmes, 1992, p. 334).

Transformation for Music Teacher Education

Making the lives of students relevant and visible in the music classroom through the use of culturally responsive pedagogy (Gay, 2018; Lind & McKoy, 2016) has been one response of music education to calls for diversity, equity, and inclusion, yet Sleeter (2017) found deficit perspectives persisted among preservice teachers competent in culturally responsive pedagogy. Might a similar danger exist for preservice music teachers if culturally responsive pedagogy is not coupled with direct experiences in the complex, nuanced, and liberatory ethos of gospel pedagogy? I offer two considerations toward transformation in music teacher education.

First, music teacher education needs to move beyond content and pedagogy to face the intersection of race in music teaching. Foregrounding content knowledge at the expense of understanding the role of race and cultural context perpetuates more fear, anti-Blackness, and avoidance of Black musics. Fear of racial discourse exists in music education (Bradley, 2007), but dialogue is essential given that predominantly White, middle-class females represent 80% of those who teach large populations of students of color (Goldring et al., 2013). Musical competency aside, an understanding of, recognition of, and vulnerability in one's racial identity as teachers, especially for White teachers, is an essential process (Emdin, 2017; Howard, 2006; Moore et al., 2018). To complicate this endeavor, many White people do not “feel” they possess race, demonstrated in colorblind racial discourse focused on “the other” instead of race in White people (Lewis, 2004). As actors within and beneficiaries of the system, whether White people are conscious of and/or accept the nature of their racial identity does not preclude their inspection. Teaching without a score is a vulnerability that is, for many, new and unpracticed, but staying in a space of avoidance, fear, or unwillingness to try is White fragility that needs to be confronted (DiAngelo, 2011, 2018).

Second, music education must reimagine, redefine, teach, and center new forms of music literacy to include the aural-oral tradition. Instead of preservice teachers learning to teach or sing through the written page alone, what if music teaching required the teacher to be the score, as experts demonstrated, requiring heavy reliance on the ear instead of the page? How might experiences of being in the aural-oral tradition allow preservice music teachers to experience and appreciate its complexities in the same way they have come to know WEAMs? I propose that being in the aural-oral tradition, without compulsion to use Western notation or its lens, offers a path forward to address deficit perspectives and anti-Blackness in the academy and holds space in music teacher education for all to benefit from an Afrocentric worldview where art acts as “a functional tool for engaging in all of the activities of daily living and for coping with the full range of human emotional and spiritual responses to life” (Barnwell, 1998, p. 8).

Author's Note

This article is based on a portion of my dissertation All God's Children Got a Song: An Exploration of Urban Music Education, written while enrolled at Temple University (PhD in music education, May 2022). This research was reported as a poster session at the third American Choral Directors Association International Symposium for Research in Choral Singing on April 30, 2022, and at the National Association for Music Education Music Research and Teacher Education Conference on February 25, 2021.

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