This fourth essay for the African American History Through Sacred Music class covers Michael W. Harris', The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church, the final section of Wyatt Tee Walker's Somebody's Calling My Name: Black Sacred Music and Social Change, and three pieces from Milton C. Sernett's African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness. Sernett's pieces are "Effects of Urbanization on Religious Life", "Singing of Good Tidings and Freedom", and "Black Theology and the Black Church: Where Do We Go from Here." A familiar theme keeps recurring in these readings. Blacks were still struggling for equality, still fighting the racism prevalent in the America.
             Michael Harris has written an interesting book about Thomas Andrew Dorsey. He describes Dorsey as a pianist, composer and arranger for prominent blues singers, one of whom we know as Ma Rainey. Dorsey took his blues style into Chicago's African American protestant churches, beginning in the late 1930's. Due to the unseemly reputation of the blues performance and the excitement that gospel blues produced in the congregation, this idea was at first rejected. This book highlights the conflict that developed. There was a segment that wanted the African-American culture and religion nurtured, and kept alive. Then there was the segment that wanted the church to be a way in which African Americans would ease into American Christianity and the prevailing white-American culture. Harris shows how, by the end of the 1930's, the first group won out due to the power of Gospel music. Harris has written a scholarly portrait of Dorsey, who continued to perform throughout the 80's. He has included an extensive notes section, and a comprehensive bibliography, so we can conclude that this is a scholarly document.
             In Walker's Somebody's Calling M...