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A City Called Heaven

Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music
  • ISBN-13: 9780252080692
  • Publisher: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
    Imprint: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
  • By Robert M. Marovich
  • Price: AUD $77.99
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 14/05/2015
  • Format: Paperback 488 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: Music [AV]
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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.
''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
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