Island gospel : Pentecostal music and identity in Jamaica and the United States / Melvin L. Butler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Butler, Melvin, author.

Series:

African American music in global perspective.

African American music in global perspective

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Church music--Pentecostal churches.

Church music.

Church music--Jamaica.

Church music--United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (172 pages).

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 2019.

Summary:

"This book offers fresh insight into the musical world of Jamaican Pentecostals in all of its complexity. Drawing on deep immersion in both American and Jamaican musical context and performing communities, Melvin Butler explores how Jamaican Pentecostals, both in the United States and back home on the island, use music to express devotion to both faith and nation, and how they seek to reconcile their religious and cultural identities, especially when the latter are closely tied to iconic "secular" musics such as ska, reggae, and dancehall. Butler deploys the concept of flow to evoke both the experience of Spirit-influenced performance and the transmigrations that fuel a controversial sharing of musical and ritual resources between Jamaica and the United States. Seeking to make sense of the ways in which these Pentecostals use music to cross and construct boundaries between local and foreign ways of worshiping God, Goodbye World connects the porous boundaries and vibrant flows of black religious worship in the United States with those found throughout the African diaspora. This book tells a story-or rather, many stories-of how musical and religious flow engenders a sense of belonging among Jamaican people of faith"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Boundaries and Flows : Music in Jamaican Pentecostal Churches at Home and Abroad

Perfecting Holiness : Musical Theologies of Piety and Pleasure

The Anointing Makes the Difference : Power, Presence, and Gendered Worship

The Old-Time Way : Nostalgia, Tradition, and Testimony

Performing Ethnicity: Style, Transcendence, and African American Gospel

Conclusion. Identity, the Holy Spirit, and the Global Community.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780252051760

0252051769