Let The Church Say Amen! Let The Church say Amen for a pioneering gospel music composer and the Father of Contemporary Gospel Music, Andrae Crouch, who died at age 72. Crouch had been taken to the hospital Saturday with “serious health complications” according to his twin sister Sandra Crouch and joined the celestial choirs on Thursday. Crouch had been hospitalized in December with pneumonia and congestive heart failure, forcing him to postpone his Let the Church Say Amen Celebration Tour that had been scheduled to start December 6 in Philadelphia. We lost one. Andrae Crouch was one of a kind. His long string of instant classics – “My Tribute,” “Soon and Very Soon,” “The Blood” and others have cemented his place in our hearts and hymnals. His obituaries talk a lot about his Oscar, his work with Michael Jackson and his contributions to movie soundtracks. Some spend time on his many years as a pastor in Southern California. All of this is true. But I would like to talk about another side of his prodigious gifts, his ability to be a “musical prophet,” if you will, one who anticipated and codified most of the musical trends to come in the field of contemporary gospel and praise and worship music. And he did it in such a way that the music and the message melded as never before. I believe that can be best heard in his solo recording Just Andrae from 1973, which gave rise to his craft as a composer of the African American sacred song tradition. His music takes us back to the age of musical modernity. Through his compositional style of blending and borrowing musical elements of other cultures, he led the 20th century Christian church into the practice of multi-ethnic ministry. Andrae Crouch shared a theological grammar, which would give birth to another way of doing a theology of radical racial reconciliation of God’s Kingdom to the world. His interdisciplinary craft of ministry and music fused contemporary secular and sacred musical styles. As portrayed in his creative musical compositional processes, he was a disciplined and rigorous worker. He had inspired, engaged and transformed the lives of millions of faithful gospel music listeners. Perhaps Crouch’s historicity within African American sacred music, Black church ministry, and gospel music world, will transcend whatever commercial commodification of Black cultural critique there might be. Let The Church say Amen, for Andrae Crouch has left behind a “healthy canon of musical liturgies” that will continue to motivate us to listen deeper, sing louder and rejoice more graciously to the good sound doctrine of gospel music, which inspires us to embrace each other. Stephen Michael Newby, D.M.A. Associate Professor of Music Head-Music Composition Director-Center for Worship-School of Theology Seattle Pacific University | 3307 Third Avenue West Seattle, Washington 98119-1950 | [email protected] 206-399-9406 cell
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 19:10:00 +0000
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