Nathan Glasper Jr. directs Calvin University’s gospel choir, an ensemble that started as a club at the institution 38 years ago. When the club started, some at the university didn’t see gospel music as a tradition that belonged in higher education. Now the ensemble—an official university choir—has over 100 members and is open to students, staff, and alumni.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Glasper was the worship pastor for a Church of God in Christ (COGIC) congregation in Grand Rapids. His church’s choir never came back after the pandemic lockdowns. So, these days, Glasper spends most of his time working with university and community choir groups not affiliated with local churches. He has gone to Poland twice this year to work with a Central European community choir whose members want to learn about Black gospel music and performance. The group isn’t church affiliated, but many of its members are Catholic.
“Europeans want to know the real history and tradition, and they want to learn it from African Americans,” Glasper said. The European community choirs don’t plan to use gospel–rooted choral practices for worship. Yet these groups are raising the international profile of the music tradition despite a changing landscape in the United States.
The pandemic accelerated the decline of church attendance among Black Protestants in the US, and in some churches, the most visible evidence of shrinking congregations is a smaller or absent choir.
Choirs have been characteristic fixtures in Black Protestant churches in the US, especially in the South, since the 1930s, and some church musicians worry that as church attendance and choir participation continue to decline, a musical tradition might be lost—or irreparably diminished.
But gospel music has never been a static genre, evolving from the congregational songs of the early 20th century to the elevated and harmonically complex gospel music of the 1980s and ’90s, exemplified by the work of composers like the late Richard Smallwood.
Recent debates about the future and evolution of gospel music have focused on the fusion of gospel styles with contemporary praise and worship music. A manager of the fusion group Maverick City Music suggested last year that Black gospel had fallen out of favor with congregations because of the singability and marketability of contemporary praise and worship music.
Others have argued choir use and participation declined because Black churches are switching over to praise teams—smaller vocal ensembles of a few singers—and using more contemporary music.
Glasper says this claim may be partly true, but no single explanation or story can explain diminishing church choirs. Changes in church life, technology, and the sound and style characteristics of the genre are all contributing factors.
“I don’t think choirs are disappearing because they became irrelevant,” he said. “Churches have changed their cultural rhythms. It used to be that if you joined a Black church and you wanted something to do, a way to be involved, you joined the choir.” But that’s no longer the case.
After the pandemic, Glasper said, congregants in his COGIC church pushed to bring back the choir. But only a handful of people showed up for a rehearsal.
In general, younger musicians aren’t being trained in choral ministry because they are growing up in churches with praise teams, Glasper said. Technologies like tracks—prerecorded sounds and accompaniment that church musicians can use to fill in instrumental or vocal parts—allow churches to smoothly fill gaps in their music teams, which decreases pressure to find people to show up to lead worship on a Sunday morning.
The evolution of Black gospel as a musical genre has also shifted the position of choral music, both inside and outside the church. Today’s gospel music is fused with popular R & B and hip-hop elements and is much more mainstream than it once was.
In 1997, for example, gospel artist Kirk Franklin’s collaboration with Texas-based youth choir God’s Property was commercially successful but controversial within the Black church. The project “inspired a new and youthful Christian audience and sold close to 3 million records,” the late gospel scholar James Abbington wrote. But “many Black churches labeled Kirk Franklin as a radical and criticized him by saying that he had gone too far by performing and blending church music with the slick, funky innovations of hip-hop and rap.”
Abbington, who made his comments in a 2009 reflection about the American church’s “music wars,” argued, “The Black church cannot afford to abandon its Christian musical tradition, even though it certainly must critically and responsibly abandon traditionalism.”
For current church musicians, separating “tradition” from “traditionalism” is the central challenge when it comes to preserving the spirit of gospel music without trying to freeze the genre in time.
Contemporary gospel artists like Jonathan McReynolds fuse gospel with contemporary pop and R & B, seeking to maintain a connection to the roots of gospel without striving to preserve a particular musical form. The gospel tradition has always been inseparably tied to the Black experience in America. And the style characteristics of the music—including the sound and function of the choir—give voice to that experience, said Dwan Hill, founder of The Choir Room and one of the most prominent artists working to fuse the gospel choir tradition with contemporary music.
While some point to COVID-19 as the culprit behind the decline in church choir participation, Abbington noted the trend over a decade before the pandemic, writing, “In many Black churches, the choir has been totally eliminated, reduced to very limited singing responsibilities, or replaced by praise teams.”
Glasper similarly suggested that although the pandemic might have been a major blow, the decline has been long and slow. He also said that while plenty of large Black churches in the South are still sustaining choirs, churches in Northern states have always been smaller, and their choirs more precariously populated.
Choir participation in American churches may be decreasing, but Black musical traditions are staying alive in other settings. Many colleges and universities have their own gospel choirs. And arrangements of spirituals, like “Wade in the Water” and “My Lord, What a Morning,” are standard on choral programs in both high schools and colleges.
The community choir programs in Europe have also been growing for over a decade. In the United Kingdom, for example, gospel choirs with no church affiliation gather singers of varying ethnic and religious backgrounds. European festivals hosted by and held for European gospel choirs have invited American gospel artists and choirs to serve as educators and guest performers. Glasper said the demand for American artists and choral conductors in Europe continues to grow.
However, Glasper acknowledges some risk comes with taking gospel music so far out of its intended context. But for the most part, he said, European gospel music enthusiasts want to learn about its history.
“We have to be careful,” Glasper said. “I never want us to lose the story behind the sound of gospel music. We always have to talk about the story. You can learn ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand,’ but do you know the story behind it?”
Glasper also worries about the potential for the commercializing of gospel in Europe and the unintentional collapsing of spirituals and traditional gospel with pop-culture adaptations. He recalled one gospel concert programmed the secular song “Shout” by the Isley Brothers alongside traditional spirituals. But he said most European singers and audiences are curious and sensitive.
Some, like Abbington, say relying on academia and community choirs to preserve the gospel tradition is a loss for the church. When he was alive, the music scholar lamented that Black composers cast out congregational spirituals and hymns in favor of modern praise music marked by spontaneity, improvisation, and excitement.
But others, like Glasper, argue congregations need praise teams, especially in regions where churches are too small to keep choirs together. He said praise teams offer flexibility and let churches engage in worship together with fewer logistical constraints because they can make musical changes on the fly.
Still, Glasper isn’t dismissive about the loss of choir—especially for churches that also have declining attendance. But he’s not worried about the future of gospel music either.
“This is an opportunity to build bridges,” he said. “Gospel music introduced people around the world to a tradition rooted in perseverance and faith and hope. This music is alive. And you can engage together in this message of hope.”
