Decolonizing Contemporary Gospel Music Through Praxis: Handsworth Revolutions

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Robert Beckford shows how the black British gospel music tradition is in crisis after it became distanced from the 'roots' of the gospel in the US that influenced it. The book develops a revolutionary gospel music genre or social gospel, in two stages. The first stage is a reshaping and retooling of the theological and theo-musicological structures of contemporary gospel music, based on a socio-political reading of black British music production. The second stage is a practical guide, a theo-musicological reflection on the production of the authors album: Jamaican Bible Remix. To reveal how these tracks are cut-and-mixed in the recording studio, the second part of the book consists of case studies of individual songs from the album (Incarnation: no blacks, no Irish, no dogs, and Magnificat). The book ends with a call for a post-logocentric black liberation theology situated within the black radical sacred music tradition of the African Caribbean diaspora. The album can be accessed at www.canterbury.ac.uk/arts-and-humanities/school-of-humanities/religion-philosophy-and-ethics/research/jamaican-bible-remix

Author Bio

Robert Beckford is Professor of Theology and Culture in the African Diaspora at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. He has also worked as a BAFTA-winning television presenter, BBC radio broadcaster, and playwright.