That Old Time Religion: Remembering Albertina Walker
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21
Contemporary Gospel music is experiencing it’s greatest period of sustained growth and success. Black Gospel artists such as CeCe Winans, Yolanda Adams, Kirk Franklin, Mary, Mary and Donnie McClurkin have become major stars. Today’s Gospel artists not only find their music programmed alongside top R&B hits on Urban radio, they also benefit from exposure on cable television networks like The Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) and movie and stage productions thanks to the enterprises of Tyler Perry & David E. Talbert.
This is quite a contrast to the world that Albertina Walker envisioned when she founded The Caravans—Gospel’s first Black female super-group—in 1953. Walker, who died on October 8th, was one of the last links to a more humble period for Gospel Music and by extension Black America.
As author Anthony Halibut describes those humble beginnings, using the example of one of Walker’s inspirations Roberta Martin, “she began her career in store-front churches, singing for nickels and dimes.” Heilbut could have been talking about any of the Black Gospel singers who first came to prominence in the 1940s and 1950s like Albertina Walker, as easily as he could have been talking about the origins of Gospel music itself.
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21
Contemporary Gospel music is experiencing it’s greatest period of sustained growth and success. Black Gospel artists such as CeCe Winans, Yolanda Adams, Kirk Franklin, Mary, Mary and Donnie McClurkin have become major stars. Today’s Gospel artists not only find their music programmed alongside top R&B hits on Urban radio, they also benefit from exposure on cable television networks like The Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) and movie and stage productions thanks to the enterprises of Tyler Perry & David E. Talbert.
This is quite a contrast to the world that Albertina Walker envisioned when she founded The Caravans—Gospel’s first Black female super-group—in 1953. Walker, who died on October 8th, was one of the last links to a more humble period for Gospel Music and by extension Black America.
As author Anthony Halibut describes those humble beginnings, using the example of one of Walker’s inspirations Roberta Martin, “she began her career in store-front churches, singing for nickels and dimes.” Heilbut could have been talking about any of the Black Gospel singers who first came to prominence in the 1940s and 1950s like Albertina Walker, as easily as he could have been talking about the origins of Gospel music itself.
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com
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