Various Artists - Gospel Music

Genre soul Publisher Hyena Records External Links Hyena Records

Whether or not you believe God is real--I have my doubts about the whole business--Gospel Music works wonderfully well as an introduction to a classic African-American musical style. Rocking, reflective, funky and, at times, passing strange, every song here stands as testimony to how questionable belief becomes unquestionable art.

Sam Cooke is represented here by the Soul Stirrers's "The Last Mile of the Way," and should be a revelation to those who know Cooke only as the suave, boyish sex symbol of his secular period. Similarly, the miraculously intense performance of "This May Be the Last Time" by the Staple Singers gives an idea of the pre-Stax Staples, complete with Roebuck's brilliant, understated guitar and Mavis's gritty vocals. (The contrast between this version of the gospel standard with that performed by the Original Five Blind Boys of Alabama is most instructive, and proves that God loves stylization.)

Some of this is close to country music; the Consolers's "Waiting for My Child" sounds a lot like "Tennessee Waltz." Troy Raney and the Soul Searchers's "By the Power of God" is rock and roll. And the Violinaires's "What He Done for Me" is impossibly funky.

Other major names in gospel are here: Mahalia Jackson, whose "My God Is Real" stands as this collection's credo, and the Swan Silvertones, who do "Oh Mary, Don't You Weep." Dorothy Love Coates's "Strange Man" is a classic narrative. This is essential music for anyone interested in rock and roll, or in popular music of the last half-century. It's not just part of the roots of rock and roll, but a version of it, steeped in a collective mania for expression that, in my opinion, could have just as easily have attached itself to any belief system. It just happened to be Christianity, and while this music might not make a believer out of you, it will probably give you occasion to ponder the relationship between ideology and oppression, freedom and constraint, form and content. God wants you to think, and most likely he wants you to dance. Belief is perhaps too much to ask, but these performers believe.