Learning Rhythm through Gospel

How can Gospel music help students identify the musical concepts of beat, meter, backbeat, subdivision, and syncopation?

Know (Knowledge)

• The musical concepts of rhythm, beat, backbeat, subdivision, and syncopation
• How to locate and create a beat, backbeat, subdivided rhythm, and syncopated rhythm
• About popular musicians inspired by Gospel, including Mahalia Jackson, Sam Cooke, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Staple Singers, and Beyoncé
• The relationship between Gospel and Popular music
• The concept of call and response

Mastery Objective:

• Students will be able to locate and perform a beat, a backbeat, a subdivided rhythm, and a syncopated rhythm by listening to Gospel and Gospel-inspired musicians.

Popular music today would sound very different without the influence of Gospel. From Little Richard to Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Mavis Staples to Sam Cooke, many of the musicians who helped develop Rock and Roll and Rhythm and Blues were first influenced by the music from churches. And the Gospel-to-pop connection is not a thing of the past--the sound of church can still be heard in everything from Beyoncé to Chance the Rapper.

But the connection between Gospel and popular music isn’t a one way street: Gospel has also long been influenced by secular music. In the 18th and 19th centuries, traveling preachers would regularly evangelize to the public through days-long “camp meetings.” To make these meetings engaging, the preachers would encourage the audience to sing popular songs of the day, set to religious lyrics. Since then, Gospel composers have regularly drawn upon secular sources in creating new hymns, and many had careers in both religious and secular music. For example, Thomas Dorsey, considered by many to be the “Father of Gospel Music,” also regularly toured with popular blues musician Ma Rainey.

Perhaps more than anything else, what keeps the strands of Gospel and popular music so closely intertwined is the rhythms. A strong, syncopated beat is essential to both styles. This rhythmic influence can be traced as far back as the 1600s, when slaves sang spirituals and ring shouts while clapping and stomping the West African rhythms of their heritage.

In this lesson, Gospel music is used as a way to introduce students to the rhythmic concepts of beat, meter, backbeat, subdivision, and syncopation. By clapping and counting along to videos of Mahalia Jackson, Sam Cooke, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Staple Singers, and Beyoncé, students practice hearing and identifying these various aspects of rhythm. Students will also use an interactive TechTool to gain a deeper understanding of the syncopated rhythms that allows Gospel, as well a popular music in general, inspire us to move.