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pentecostal

Pentecostal

United States · 1900s

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Description

Pentecostal is a worship-centered musical style that grew out of early 20th-century Pentecostal and Holiness revivals in the United States. It blends African American spirituals, folk hymnody, and blues-inflected shouts with ecstatic congregational practices such as call-and-response, handclapping, dancing, and moments of free prayer or glossolalia.

Musically, Pentecostal services move fluidly between driving praise songs and slow, soaring worship ballads. Hallmarks include 12/8 and triplet feels, gospel chord language, extended vamps, rising key modulations, antiphonal choir-leader exchanges, and spontaneous spoken exhortations. Instrumentation ranges from small rhythm sections centered on Hammond organ, piano, bass, drums, and tambourine to large choirs and contemporary worship bands with electric guitars and modern production.

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Spirituals are African American religious folk songs created primarily by enslaved people in the United States during the 19th century. Sung largely a cappella in group settings, they combine call-and-response leadership with communal refrains, handclaps, foot-stomps, and the ring shout—a circular, counterclockwise dance that preserves West and Central African participatory practices. Textually, spirituals draw on biblical narratives—especially Exodus, bondage and deliverance, water and journey motifs—to express both faith and coded hope for freedom. Many songs carried double meanings, functioning as worship and as veiled commentary or guidance (e.g., “Wade in the Water,” “Steal Away”). Musically, spirituals favor pentatonic and modal melodies, blue notes, heterophony and spontaneous ornamentation. Their rhythms often use off-beat clapping and polyrhythmic layering. Unlike later gospel, early spirituals were not instrument-driven or industry-composed; they were orally transmitted, fluid in form, and shaped by community improvisation. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, arrangers adapted them into concert spirituals for choirs and classically trained soloists.

Ring shout is an African American sacred music-and-dance tradition rooted in the Gullah Geechee communities of the U.S. Southeast. It combines antiphonal (call-and-response) singing with a counterclockwise, shuffling ring dance, handclapping, and a percussive "shout stick" tapped on the floor. Despite its name, the classic ring shout is not a shouted vocal style but a devotional ritual. A leader "calls" lines that a chorus answers, while "shouters" circle with restrained, gliding footwork (traditionally avoiding crossing the feet) and intensifying polyrhythms. The resulting texture fuses West and Central African communal dance practices with Christian spiritual texts, producing one of the oldest continuously practiced forms of African American sacred performance.

Sacred Harp is a tradition of communal, a cappella hymn singing that uses four-shape (fa–sol–la–mi) notation to teach parts and lead congregational participation. The melody typically sits in the tenor part, with treble, alto, and bass forming a robust, open-voiced harmony around it. Named after the influential tunebook The Sacred Harp (first published in 1844), the style is marked by powerful, unaccompanied singing, bright modal colors, fuguing entrances, and a distinctive "hollow square" seating arrangement with each voice part facing the center. Singings emphasize participation over performance, with leaders choosing songs and beating time as the class begins each piece by “singing the shapes” before the lyrics. Although rooted in religious hymnody, Sacred Harp today functions as a living folk music tradition—devotional, social, and intergenerational—celebrated at local singings and large conventions across the United States and, increasingly, around the world.

Blues is an African American musical tradition defined by expressive "blue notes," call-and-response phrasing, and a characteristic use of dominant-seventh harmony in cyclical song forms (most famously the 12‑bar blues). It is as much a feeling as a form, conveying sorrow, resilience, humor, and hard-won joy. Musically, blues commonly employs the I–IV–V progression, swung or shuffled rhythms, and the AAB lyric stanza. Melodies lean on the minor/major third ambiguity and the flattened fifth and seventh degrees. Core instruments include voice, guitar (acoustic or electric), harmonica, piano, bass, and drums, with slide guitar, bends, and vocal melismas as signature techniques. Over time the blues has diversified into regional and stylistic currents—Delta and Piedmont country blues, urban Chicago and Texas blues, West Coast jump and boogie-woogie—while profoundly shaping jazz, rhythm & blues, rock and roll, soul, funk, and much of modern popular music.

Church music refers to music created for Christian worship and liturgical use, ranging from ancient chant to modern congregational songs and large choral–instrumental works. It encompasses unaccompanied vocal traditions (such as chant and Renaissance polyphony), congregational hymnody and chorales, organ repertoire, Anglican anthems, Lutheran cantatas, Catholic Mass settings, and contemporary praise and worship styles. The music’s primary aims are to carry sacred texts clearly, support ritual actions, cultivate reverence, and enable the gathered assembly to participate in prayer. Typical performance forces include soloists, choirs (children, adult, or mixed SATB), organ, and occasionally chamber or orchestral ensembles, with languages historically in Latin and later in various vernaculars. Stylistically it has evolved through modal melodies, imitative counterpoint, tonal harmony, and contemporary idioms, while remaining text- and context-driven.

Work song is a functional vocal music tradition created to coordinate physical labor, set a steady pace, and build solidarity among workers. It typically features call-and-response structures, short improvised verses, and a strong, repetitive pulse aligned to the motions of the task (hammering, rowing, hauling, chopping). While versions exist in many cultures, the most documented stream is the African American work song in the United States—heard in fields, on railroads and levees, in lumber camps, and on prison farms. Closely related practices include maritime shanties, fishing chanteys, and industrial worksongs, all of which use rhythm and group participation to ease strenuous or monotonous work. Musically, work songs are commonly unaccompanied (a cappella) or use body percussion and tools as instruments. Lyrics often reference the job at hand, hardship and hope, local news, humor, or moral commentary, with leaders improvising lines answered by a chorus.

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