Using both a socio-cultural and a historical perspective, this seminar explores the major forms of African American religious music indigenous to the United States, (Negro Spirituals and gospel music), as well as those Euro-American musical expressions that have emerged as integral parts of the African American worship experience. Students are engaged in multi-layered experiences of history, aesthetics and ethnography through the frequent utilization of audio and video recordings, as well as participant observation in African American and non-African American churches. The course format is both diachronic and synchronic, so designed to assist students in recognizing relationships between different forms of African American musical expression, despite their differing time frames and contexts of origin. REQUIRED TEXTBOOKS: Bernice Reagon. We'll Understand It Better By and By: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers. Washington & London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. Southern Eileen, ed. Readings in Black American Music. New York: Norton, 1983. Collated xeroxed reading packet at Collegiate Copies. RECOMMENDED: Horace Boyer. How Sweet the Sound: The Golden Age of Gospel. Washington, D.C.: Elliott & Clark, 1995. Jacqueline DjeDje and Eddie Meadows. California Soul: Music of African Americans in the West. Berkeley: University of California, 1998. Kirk Franklin. Church Boy: My Music and My Life. Nashville: Word, 1998. Michael Harris. The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas A. Dorsey in the Urban Church. New York: Oxford, 1992. Anthony Heilbut. The Gospel Sound. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971; Anchor, 1975. (Read with caution) William B. McClain. Come Sunday: The Liturgy of Zion. Nashville: Abingdon, 1990. Kip Lornell. Afro-American Gospel Quartets in Memphis. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois, 1988. Willa Ward-Royster. How I Got Over: Clara Ward and the World Famous Ward Singers. Philadelphia: Temple, 1997. Daniel Wolf. You Send Me: The Life and Times of Sam Cooke. New York: Quill, 1995. Alan Young. Woke Me Up This Morning: Black Gospel Singers and the Gospel Life. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997.