A City Called Heaven
Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music
by Robert Marovich
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Pub Date Mar 15 2015 | Archive Date Apr 15 2015
Description
In A City Called Heaven, gospel announcer and music historian Robert Marovich shines a light on the humble origins of a majestic genre and its indispensable bond to the city where it found its voice: Chicago.
Marovich follows gospel music from early hymns and camp meetings through the Great Migration that brought it to Chicago. In time, the music grew into the sanctified soundtrack of the city's mainline black Protestant churches. In addition to drawing on print media and ephemera, Marovich mines hours of interviews with nearly fifty artists, ministers, and historians--as well as discussions with relatives and friends of past gospel pioneers--to recover many forgotten singers, musicians, songwriters, and industry leaders. He also examines how a lack of economic opportunity bred an entrepreneurial spirit that fueled gospel music's rise to popularity and opened a gate to social mobility for a number of its practitioners. As Marovich shows, gospel music expressed a yearning for freedom from earthly pains, racial prejudice, and life's hardships. In the end, it proved to be a sound too mighty and too joyous for even church walls to hold.
Robert Marovich hosts "Gospel Memories" on Chicago's WLUW 88.7 FM and is founder and editor-in-chief of The Journal of Gospel Music, www.journalofgospelmusic.com.
Advance Praise
"An extraordinary work. A long-overdue history of the city and people at the heart of gospel music, A City Called Heaven is a readable, meticulously researched chronology that provides a link in understanding not just gospel music, but African American music, history, and religion. The book's greatest strength is Robert Marovich's unparalleled access to Chicago's gospel music royalty, past and present. The detailed scholarship and analysis is enhanced by hundreds of interviews. Nobody knows Chicago gospel better than Marovich. To use the language of the African American church, it is a 'blessing' to have a scholar who loves this music this much be the one to write this essential history."--Robert Darden, author of Nothing but Love in God's Water, Volume 1: Black Sacred Music from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement
"Throughout these fascinating pages, Marovich colorfully shares the blood and sweat, as well as the feuds and collaborations that worked hand in hand to birth this stunning and uniquely American music known as gospel. It's a book worth a loud, boisterous, and affirmative shout!"--Bil Carpenter, author of Uncloudy Days: The Gospel Music Encyclopedia
"A much-needed extended history of Chicago's pivotal role in the development of gospel music, on its growth within the city, and on how its artists, composers, and various media entrepreneurs helped to make gospel a worldwide music form."--Deborah Smith Pollard, author of When the Church Becomes Your Party: Contemporary Gospel Music
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9780252080692 |
| PRICE | $29.95 (USD) |
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