SouthernGospelBlog.com

I’m not sure if anyone else has noticed this. If not, then I guess everyone somehow missed until now that Brian Free & Assurance is scheduled to perform in this evening’s Dove Awards ceremony.

The Crabb Family, which has of late seen some CCM success, is also performing, and that’s already generally known. But somehow I’d missed that BF&A was also scheduled to represent Southern Gospel.

John Styll, Jesus Music pioneer and now President of the Gospel Music Association, has this to say about Southern Gospel music:

John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association, defines gospel music, not as genre, but as a huge umbrella that today covers every conceivable musical style.

He said, “Christian refers to a message to the lyrical content not so much the musical form.”

According to Styll, there are only two genres of gospel music; the black gospel of Mahalia Jackson and the southern gospel of the Blackwood Brothers.

He said those genres are still thriving today and while those sounds may be a little different, they’re both relatively unchanged.

“Southern Gospel music is mostly songs about heaven and the hereafter and a lot of black Gospel is about getting through and getting by and praising the Lord and it still is,” he said.

Other sounds have been brought into gospel music and brought under the “umbrella” by musicians from rock, rap, hip-hop and heavy-metal.

My sisters also have a subscription to Singing News and decide between themselves who they will vote for in the Fan Awards. They had a difficult time deciding who to vote for for Pianist. They decided first that they would vote for someone who was alive.

They narrowed it down to Kim Collingsworth and Matthew Holt. But they hadn’t heard either live and so couldn’t decide.

So they decided to solve the problem the Moravian way: by lot. In Colonial days, the Moravians were known for taking Proverbs 16:33 literally; a Moravian man’s wife would even be picked by lot!

My sisters decided to place both names in a hat and pull one. But since that would be too few names, they decided, they would put all ten names in the hat and pick either the first or the last.

The first was Roger Fortner, and since they wanted to vote for a pianist, they decided they would go with the last.

Matthew Holt’s name came out third or fourth, so he was out. They had pulled out quite a few names–but hadn’t counted exactly–when Kim Collingsworth’s name came out. That could be the last one, they thought, but decided to check in the hat one last time first.

So into the hat they went and found another name: Adam Crabb. They couldn’t believe that they’d actually vote for a Crabb, and so they decided to check the hat again.

As it turned out, there was one more name in the hat. Roger Bennett.

I had told them I was going to vote for Roger one last time to honor his family, but they had told me they weren’t going to vote for a dead man. I guess God had other plans.