Gospel in Harlem: a history

From a Dutch village to a Black capital

Wikipedia says Harlem was a Dutch village named after Haarlem in the Netherlands and was formally organised in 1658. Its character changed in the early twentieth century, when Black Americans moving north from the South, including to New York, transformed the neighbourhood. Harlem became known as a Black mecca, and in its churches, theatres and ballrooms music went with it.

The Great Migration in numbers

Wikipedia gives the shift in figures: Central Harlem's Black population rose from about 10% in 1910 to 32.4% in 1920 and roughly 70% by 1930. Its Black gospel article adds that the style began in the Southeast, where most Black Americans lived before the Great Migration, and that northern Black churches at first resisted Thomas Dorsey's music before southern migrants founded churches of their own.

Churches at the centre

Wikipedia counts more than 400 churches in the area, many historic, along with small storefront churches in converted commercial spaces. Abyssinian Baptist Church, whose congregation began after Ethiopian seamen and free Black parishioners left First Baptist Church over segregated seating, became an influential centre of African American spirituality, politics and community; Adam Clayton Powell Sr. became its pastor in 1908, and by 1930 it reportedly had about 13,000 members, making it the largest African American church in the city. Wikipedia says it remains a centre of the Harlem gospel tradition, and that the organist Fats Waller played there while his father was a minister.

The renaissance years

In the 1920s and 1930s Central and West Harlem were the centre of the Harlem Renaissance, which spanned music, literature, theatre and the visual arts. Harlem pianists developed stride piano in the 1920s, and the Apollo Theater took its name on 125th Street in 1934. Gospel belonged to the same cultural moment: the Abyssinian church, Wikipedia says, was important to religious music during the Renaissance.

From the pulpit to the concert stage

Wikipedia's Black gospel article records that in 1950 Joe Bostic produced the Negro Gospel and Religious Music Festival at Carnegie Hall, moving it to Madison Square Garden in 1959. That is the lineage a Harlem gospel concert belongs to: music made for worship, presented to an audience that buys a seat. The performers and the venue differ from week to week, but the idea is old.

Gospel's own stars

The lineage of the music runs through a few names. Thomas A. Dorsey moved to Chicago in 1916 and, Wikipedia says, created the first gospel choir. He helped develop the career of Mahalia Jackson, who was born in New Orleans in 1911 and moved to Chicago around 1928. Wikipedia's Black gospel article names the Swan Silvertones, the Soul Stirrers, the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Fairfield Four and the Golden Gate Quartet among the quartet groups. Harlem's churches heard this music as it spread north.

A neighbourhood of rooms for music

Wikipedia notes that the Savoy Ballroom on Lenox Avenue was a well-known swing dance venue, and that Harlem later produced many R&B and soul groups and hip-hop artists. The neighbourhood's music was never only gospel. That is part of why a one-hour gospel concert fits so well into a Harlem visit: the church, the theatre and the dance hall belong to one story.

Hearing it today

Today a visitor can hear gospel in Harlem in two ways: by attending a church's own service, under that church's rules for visitors, or by buying a ticket to a concert such as the Saturday Harlem Gospel Live Music Concert. A concert lasts about an hour and is built for people who are new to the music. A service is a congregation's worship, and a visitor comes as its guest.

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