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Meaning-Making in the
Contemporary
Congregational Song Genre
Daniel Thornton
Meaning-Making in the Contemporary
Congregational Song Genre
Daniel Thornton
Meaning-Making in
the Contemporary
Congregational Song
Genre
Daniel Thornton
Alphacrucis College
Parramatta, NSW, Australia
ISBN 978-3-030-55608-2 ISBN 978-3-030-55609-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55609-9
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Foreword
Serious academic studies of contemporary congregational music have been

around since the mid-1990s. Over that time, scholars have approached the
topic from a range of theological, sociological, economic, and musicologi-
cal lenses. Musically, discussion has largely come out of the discipline of
popular music studies, which considers the cultural/structural/political
elements at work, as well as the musical. What Daniel Thornton does in this
volume is take a very deep dive into the musicological while considering the
everyday experiences of people as they create and perform congregational
music, or engage with it spiritually, and the other folks who just ‘like it’.
Although this book references and dissects many of the greatest con-
gregational songs of our modern time, this is not a book about what is
great. This is a book about what the music sounds like, what it is doing,
how people are seeking to (re)produce it, and how it is affecting the lives
of those who engage with it. This is a book about how everyday congre-
gants perform this music and own it within their lives and their faith.
As with much research in this discipline, Thornton brings years, dare I
say decades (!), of experience as a composer, performer, and consumer of
contemporary congregational music to his study. What is particularly
refreshing though is that Thornton is not selling us something, or he is
not writing to an agenda; he is simply telling us what is happening musi-
cally and socially. And he is proving that time and again with hard data,
with research we can take into future studies as we consider how congre-
gational music might twist and change over time.
This book is undergirded by years of rigorous research and analysis.
There is nothing left to chance here, no subjective opinions masquerading
v
vi FOREWORD
as fact. This is a deeply objective, factual analysis. And that is what the
(sub)discipline of congregational music is crying out for. Sure, we have
seen this in more anthropological and sociological accounts, but this kind
of quantifiable musicology has been rare.
I write this Foreword in a fascinating time globally. Just today, in the
place where I live, churches were able to accept a limited number of wor-
shippers—but there was to be no ‘singing or chanting’. How interesting
that congregational singing has been singled out as a health risk. What
extra power has just been invested in the common activity of joining in
(any form of) corporate singing. In the weeks prior to this, here, and
around the world, churches have been delivering their liturgies, and the
music that accompanies them, virtually, in an online world that we all now
recognize as normal. But these external stimuli raise very real questions for
congregational music. What will congregational singing look like (and
sound like) in a post-COVID-19 world? What does it mean for churches
if they cannot sing out loud together? Does this environment actually
highlight the importance of high production values in recorded congrega-
tional song? How will people of faith adapt to a personal-only musical
experience? How do congregants connect to worship in an online envi-
ronment? What is achievable musically for congregants when left on their
own in their lounge rooms? And dare I say it, how relevant is music to the
contemporary post-COVID-19 church? Here Thornton’s volume takes
on even more significance. It tells us what is achievable. It documents
objectively what people do and don’t want to sing. And more than any-
thing, this volume documents in the most timely fashion, how online
communities built around contemporary congregational songs function
and grow. As Thornton notes, the volume gives us a “greater understand-
ing of this global genre, and its impact, through its texts, producers, and
participant-audiences”. This volume tells us exactly what the global con-
temporary congregational song genre sounds like, how songs are con-
structed, and why people engage with them the way they do. What could
be more timely than that!
This is a volume of great value, and we will be richer for it analytically
and practically.
But it is also a volume that should make us ask, ‘what now?’
Sydney, Australia Mark Evans

June 2020
Acknowledgements
I firstly want to thank my publishing family at Palgrave Macmillan. It has

been a four-year journey with quite a few rejections to find the quality
academic publisher who understood and shared my vision for this mono-
graph. I am grateful for their support, advice, and commitment. Particular
thanks to Amy for your early help in bringing this to fruition.
This work emerged from my original PhD studies at Macquarie
University, Australia. Alphacrucis College (AC), where I worked during
that time, and continue to work, was so supportive throughout the entire
journey of my candidature and then additionally granted me a sabbatical
in 2019 to complete the tome. I want to thank AC’s president, Steve
Fogarty, who, alongside the Executive Committee and Academic Board,
has championed a research culture which continues to propel the College
forwards towards its envisioned future as an Australian Christian University.
Additionally, thanks to the various heads of Research and the Research
Committee who have allowed me to hone my scholarship through the
funding of my presentations at key conferences over the past seven years.
Many of my colleagues at AC have been tremendously encouraging and
supportive of my growth as a scholar. I particularly want to acknowledge
Lily Arasaratnam-Smith, who patiently endured much of my early embar-
rassing attempts at academic writing and helped me along the journey to
become a scholar who no longer feels like an imposter. Senior AC scholars
offered sage advice regarding the publishing process, while many peers
who were also completing their terminal degrees and pursuing publishing
opportunities spurred me on. I fear if I started to name them all, I would
miss someone, but the entire AC family is dear to me.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My PhD supervisor and ongoing academic mentor is Mark Evans.

None of what exists within these pages would have been possible without
him. One of the things I most admire about Mark is that he maintains his
faith within the secular academy and has taught me that good scholarship
should be justifiable to all, no matter what religious or other predisposi-
tions they consciously or subconsciously bring to the table. Most impor-
tantly, I consider him my friend.
The Christian Congregational Music network has been a source of con-
tinual inspiration and challenge. My first presentation at the 2013 confer-
ence in Oxford, UK, opened my eyes to the people behind the scholarship
on which I had cut my academic teeth. This network also provided me
with my first opportunity to publish, a co-written book chapter in a vol-
ume edited by Tom Wagner and Anna Nekola. Additionally, after initial
rejections of this current work for publication, Monique Ingalls, Allan
Moore, and Lester Ruth provided important critiques of my proposal,
which undoubtedly helped it towards becoming the manuscript that is
now in your hands. In the early days of my scholarly development, I also
connected with the UK-based Theology, Religion and Popular Culture
Network under the leadership of Clive Marsh. Both he and the network
have been a source of opportunity and encouragement in developing my
framework for contemporary congregational songs.
Before coming to the world of academia, I had spent two decades as the
worship pastor in a number of churches, some pioneer works, some multi-
campus megachurches. This book would not contain any of the rich com-
plexity or real-world application if it wasn’t for all of those years of ministry.
I thank every pastor, church, team member, and congregation member
who has worshipped with me and helped me grow in my understanding of
what musical worship is and what God intended it to be. I additionally
thank the many congregation members from those churches and others
who participated in the online survey providing vital data for this research.
I would also like to personally thank Matt Crocker, Mia Fieldes, Ben
Fielding, Tim Hughes, Matt Redman, and Darlene Zschech, the extraor-
dinary and internationally prominent songwriters-worship leaders who
gave me their time and honest reflections to help inform this research.
Special thanks to Richard Fowler, a dear friend and fellow scholar.
While I beat him to the finish line with my PhD, he can honestly take
credit for much of my scholarly development, asking me innumerable hard
questions which made my brain work overtime to satisfactorily answer.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
More importantly, as a fellow Godly creative, he has shown me the beauti-

ful possibilities of creativity, scholarship, and faith.
If my mum were still alive, she would have been bursting with pride.
She always saw more potential in me than I did in myself, as only a mother
can. I also want to thank my dad, whose love of God and diligence in life
is a constant inspiring standard I hope I can live up to and emulate for my
own children and grandchildren.
Finally, I would like to thank my family. Kris also deserves a PhD for the
amount of time she allowed me to invest in study and writing. She is an
extraordinary mother, wife, woman, and friend, and the significance of
that on my scholarly work, though indirect, is profound. I also want to
thank my beloved children (who are now all adults) and their expanding
families. You keep me young and inspire me at every turn. Keep dreaming.
Never give up.
Contents
1 Contemporary Congregational Songs Genre Formation

and Scrutiny 1
Introduction 1
The Formation of a Genre 4
Perspectives on CCS History 7
Selected Scholarship 8
Why Music Semiology? (Texts, Writers, Audience) 14
YouTube: The Primary Text 20
Bibliography 23
2 Contemporary Congregational Songs 27

What’s in a Name? 27
Praise and Worship Theology 29
Contemporary for Whom? 30
Defining Congregational 31
Songs or Music? 32
Are the Most Sung Songs Representative of the Genre? 34
Christian Copyright Licensing International 35
Songs Under Analysis 37
Bibliography 38
3 The Contemporary Congregational Song Industry

(Poietic Analysis Pt 1) 41
Introduction 41
Where Do They Come From? 42
xi
xii CONTENTS
Authenticity, Originality, and the Singer-Songwriter 43

The Production Milieu 48
Industry Insights 50
Bibliography 54
4 So the Songwriters Say (Poietic Analysis Pt 2) 57

Who’s Who? 57
Writing for the People 59
Performance or Participation? 65
Predicting Success 66
Conclusion 71
Bibliography 72
5 The Old and New Guard: Ways of Thinking for

Contemporary Congregational Songs Writers
(Poietic Analysis Pt 3) 73
Bridging Old and New 73
Theological Considerations 76
Co-writing 81
Roles and Writing 83
Poietic Conclusion 85
Bibliography 85
6 How Christians Feel About the Songs They Sing:

Individually (Esthesic Analysis Pt 1) 87
Methods and Background 87
To Sing or Not to Sing 90
The Individual’s Perspective and their Voice 94
Why Christians Connect with Certain Songs 99
Bibliography 106
7 How Christians Feel About the Songs They Sing:

Corporately (Esthesic Analysis Pt 2)109
Australia’s National Church Life Surveys 109
What Gathered Worshippers Really Think 110
The Other NCLS Survey and What It Reveals 114
The Big Picture of Local Churches’ Musical Worship 114
Synthesising the Individual and Corporate 117
Bibliography 119
CONTENTS xiii
8 Just Another Pop Song? The Music (Trace Analysis Pt 1)121

Introduction 121
Memorable Melodies 123
Melodic Expectations 127
Catchy 129
Banal Harmony 130
The Band 136
Tempos and Time Signatures 138
Structure 140
Bibliography 141
9 Just Another Pop Song? The Lyrics (Trace Analysis Pt 2)145

Introduction 145
Counting Lyrics 145
Addressing God 147
Theology and Poetry 151
CCS Categories 157
Focus of Current CCS 161
Bibliography 166
10 Some Individual Examples: Australia (Trace Analysis Pt 3)171

The Problem with Analysing a Genre 171
Cornerstone 172
Mighty to Save 175
Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) 177
What a Beautiful Name 180
Bibliography 182
11 Some Individual Examples: UK and USA (Trace

Analysis Pt 4)185
10,000 Reasons 185
Here I Am to Worship 190
How Great Is Our God 193
In Christ Alone 195
Revelation Song 199
Trace Analysis Conclusion 201
Bibliography 202
xiv CONTENTS
12 The Current and Future Contemporary Congregational

Songs Genre203
Meaning-Making in CCS 203
Conflicting Messages 204
Ambivalence or Appropriation 206
The Evolving Genre 208
The Functional Genre 210
Where to from Here? 211
Bibliography 214
Appendix A217
Bibliography219
Index233
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 The Magisteria-Ibiza Spectrum (Marsh and Roberts, 2013, 19;
excerpt from Personal Jesus by Clive Marsh and Vaughan
S. Roberts, copyright © 2012. Used by permission of Baker
Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group) 13
Fig. 8.1 D and D2 guitar fingering 135
Fig. 9.1 Key themes/words in CCS 155
Fig. 9.2 Four CCS lyric categories 160
Fig. 9.3 Weight of CCS song types 161
Fig. 9.4 Visual representation of Godhead and POV fraction 164
Fig. 11.1 10,000 Reasons: http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=DXDGE_lRI0E (Background picture) 186
xv
CHAPTER 1
Contemporary Congregational Songs Genre

Formation and Scrutiny
Introduction
Christians sing. Before instantly dismissing that statement as idealistic or
naïve, consider both the Scriptural imperative to do so for believers and
the worship practices that Christians have institutionalised over the last
2000 years. Whether one appeals to the Old Testament Scriptures, such as
Psalm 96:1 “Oh, sing to the Lord a new song! Sing to the Lord, all the
earth”, or the New Testament, “speaking to one another in psalms and
hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to
the Lord”, the edict is clear, Christians sing. They sing not only to God,
and to one another, but also to themselves. Some have observed in recent
times that (Western) Christians are singing less than they once did
(Goddard 2016). Undoubtedly, there are Christians who feel they cannot
sing or choose not to sing. Nevertheless, Christians throughout the ages
have expressed their faith through song, and particularly through com-
munal song, not just because it was a noble idea or an entertaining activity,
or because their surrounding culture celebrated communal singing, but
because it was a Christian mandate.
The content and style of Christian song and its accompaniment (if any)
have changed over time and across different cultures and traditions. The
bastion of certain styles of Christian song has lasted centuries, such as
Gregorian chants, the Eastern Orthodox musical traditions, or the hymns
of Watts or Wesley. At other times, musical style within the church has
© The Author(s) 2021 1

D. Thornton, Meaning-Making in the Contemporary
Congregational Song Genre,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55609-9_1
2 D. THORNTON
been transient or localised. I still remember the first and only rap song that
made it into our church’s roster (for a short time) in the early 1990s:
“Jump To The Jam” (©1993 Paul Iannuzzelli).
When songs and styles have a long life, they also gain the opportunity
to be examined and analysed from various perspectives and disciplines over
multiple generations. However, an emerging music genre may be left
unexamined by scholars until it is quite well established or has made
enough of an impact somewhere on some group of people. Indeed, aca-
demia was slow to catch up with the emergence of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the
1950s, not least because it was not seen as ‘serious’ music, and thus not
deemed worthy of serious scholarship. However, by the 1980s, popular
music studies had emerged with seminal research from Simon Frith,
Richard Middleton, and Allan Moore, among others. Reflection necessar-
ily follows, rather than precedes, practice, but at what distance? At what
point does analysing the ‘seedling’ of a music genre produce viable insight
into the ‘tree’ which it may or may not become?
Contemporary congregational songs (CCS) now have some 50 years of
history, of evolution, and of worship practice in contemporary expressions
of Christianity. En masse, Christians sing contemporary congregational
songs. Their origins may have been in Pentecostal and charismatic circles;
it was what Pentecostal/charismatic Christians sang. This fastest growing
strain of Christianity over the last century now represents more than 500
million adherents worldwide (Pew Research Center 2011), but the genre
has had far wider implications. Hundreds of millions of Christians sing
contemporary congregational songs regardless of denominational, gener-
ational, lingual, or cultural differences. It is the examination and analysis
of this global genre of musical worship renewal that this volume undertakes.
Key Questions and Findings

There is a growing body of scholarship that addresses contemporary wor-
ship and contemporary worship practices. Is there a need for another vol-
ume? A selection of existing scholarship will be discussed later in this
chapter to establish the gap in the research, and where this volume fits in
the field. Before that, however, this section provides a summary of why
this book is needed and what it uniquely addresses. First, is the notion that
contemporary congregational songs are a musically, lyrically, and extra-
musically definable global music genre. Many definitions of contemporary
musical worship have been offered, sometimes according to music style/
(sub)genre, or where it fits in the historical timeline, or where its cultural
1 CONTEMPORARY CONGREGATIONAL SONGS GENRE FORMATION… 3
roots lie. However, the definition of contemporary congregational songs

that persists across the literature is a generic one: ‘popular music with
Christian lyrics’. This research, however, demonstrates that the contempo-
rary congregational song genre, in terms of the way in which it is mea-
sured by both Christian Copyright Licensing International and YouTube,
exists as a global music genre and is definable to a high degree. The great
majority of congregational music-making research is about a context,
most often a specific Christian gathering or group (e.g., M. Ingalls 2018).
However, this analysis of the most sung CCS provides us with a global
picture of the singing (Western(ised)) church which is not bound to a
specific church, denomination, or location, but wherever CCS are
employed or experienced. Only two scholarly volumes in the last 15 years
have attempted a study of the genre not bound to a specific context: Open
Up the Doors: Music in the Modern Church (Evans 2006) and The Message
in the Music: Studying Contemporary Praise and Worship (Walrath and
Woods 2010). These are both excellent studies, besides now being a little
dated. Each volume, however, only focuses on a single region: Evans on
Australia and Walrath and Woods on the USA. No published volume to
this point has taken multiple region data from Christian Copyright
Licensing International reports to establish and analyse the global genre.
Second, the specific context (e.g., a local church) or location (e.g., a

conference or concert) where contemporary congregational songs have
been typically studied provides an excellent understanding of those set-
tings. Research of this type tends to be ethnographic. In order to provide
a different, complementary, and potentially contrasting lens to understand
Christians’ broad engagement with the genre, this study utilises both
unique primary sources and different methods. For example, Australia’s
National Church Life Survey (NCLS) on contemporary worship practices
(2011) is a rich source of data, never before analysed for its insights into
the CCS genre. The anonymous online survey designed and employed for
this study is also unique, both in construction and in the data gathered.
Finally, while YouTube has been a growing resource for exploring
Christians’ engagement with CCS, this study uses it as the primary text for
that stage of the analysis. In summary, the different sources and contexts
bring important, and previously unexplored, perspectives to the scholarly
dialectic around CCS.
As identified above, some sections of this research rely on data from
Australian sources, and indeed, may contain a subconsciously Australian
4 D. THORNTON
perspective of the global genre. That being said, many international data
sources are also utilised, and as a scholar, composer, and worship leader, I
have travelled the globe and witnessed first-hand, diverse, localised, and
varied cultural expressions of CCS which inform and affirm my findings.
To whatever degree a uniquely Australian perspective may still colour this
research, this study provides an important counterpoint to the extant con-
gregational music-making scholarship. It is complementary to the ethno-
musicological thick descriptions of particular contexts and local expressions
of contemporary worship, or to the historical accounts of the genre, or to
the theological or philosophical engagements with the genre, and what-
ever regional influences may have informed their authors.
Beyond the unique sources and methods, this research adopts a disci-
plinary approach that is rare in congregational music studies. The method-
ology of music semiology and its interdisciplinary partners will be discussed
in depth later in this chapter. Here, however, I posit that the way in which
this methodology builds on a musicological heritage means that the songs
themselves are central to the analysis. This stands in stark contrast to much
of the congregational music studies literature where little or no analysis is
given of the actual music, but rather of the people who make it, or engage
with it, or the environmental, ecclesial, cultural, theological, historical, or
political contexts in which contemporary congregational songs occur. At
the same time, this methodology does not ignore the production milieu at
one end, nor the individual, subjective meaning-making at the other,
which all contribute to an ongoing dialogical definition of the genre.
The Formation of a Genre

When does a music genre become a music genre? Can one composer alone
create and define a new genre? If so, how many works do they need to
compose that fit certain criteria before it is generally accepted as a genre?
Can it be a genre if it is only defined by some musical/lyrical elements?
These are questions addressed by genre theory. The notion of a music
genre is at once obvious and enigmatic. As fans, we instinctively recognise
music in those genres with which we are familiar, and when music is not
of those genres. However, defining music genres in more positive and
concrete terms can be challenging. This section engages with the work of
five genre theory scholars to establish contemporary congregational songs
as a music genre. Frow approaches the discussion from a literary orienta-
tion, stating:
[G]enres, are cultural forms, dynamic and historically fluid, … guiding peo-
ple’s behaviour; they are learned, and they are culturally specific; they are
rooted in institutional infrastructures; they classify objects in ways that are
sometimes precise, sometimes fuzzy, but always sharper at the core than at
the edges; and they belong to a system of kinds, and are meaningful only in
terms of the shifting differences between them. (Frow 2006, 128)
Importantly, this quote indicates that genre markers will be most evi-
dent towards the “core”. It is, of course, unrealistic to analyse every con-
temporary congregational song ever written, or even every contemporary
congregational song that Christian Copyright Licensing International
(CCLI) represents, which is now well over half a million. For this reason,
a sample must be chosen for analysis. However, according to Frow’s defi-
nition, a random sample of CCS would not provide us with the clearest
picture of the CCS genre. Rather, an analysis of a sample of songs at the
core of the genre would provide the greatest insight. For the global CCS
genre, core songs would be those that are sung by the most Christians,
across the most countries and denominations around the world; a discus-
sion to which I will return. This quote also affirms that the CCS genre
definition derived from this research is subject to the “dynamic and his-
torically fluid” nature of genre definitions. It is only a snapshot of the
genre at a moment in church and wider Western cultural history and at a
specific point in the CCS scholarly discourse. Ultimately, the proposed
CCS genre definition in this book needs to be in an ongoing state of con-
testation, re-examination, nuancing, and updating.
With a more specific focus on music genres, Lena and Peterson state
that they are “systems of orientations, expectations, and conventions that
bind together an industry, performers, critics, and fans in making what
they identify as a distinctive sort of music” (Lena and Peterson 2008,
698). The particular relationship, noted above, between music genres and
industry is a focus for Negus, who recognises the co-constitutive processes
of music genres shaping and being shaped by lived musical experience and
“formal organization by an entertainment industry” (Negus 1999, 4).
This link will be borne out in the coming chapters.
Approaching music genre theories initially from their “linguistic label
(a name)”, Marino, who builds on the work of Fabbri (1982) and Holt
(2007), suggests they are assigned to a “set of recognizable musical fea-
tures … carrying socio-cultural connotations” (Marino 2013, 7). From
this vantage point, he reviews approximately 100 genre names, dividing
6 D. THORNTON
them into six macro-classes: (1) Music (descriptive), (2) Aim (prescrip-
tive), (3) Lyrics (thematic), (4) Culture (aggregative), (5) Geography
(locative), and (6) Totem (i.e., object; symbolic) (ibid., 12). For Marino,
“Christian (rock)” (which would include CCS in his taxonomy) is classi-
fied under the “Lyric (thematic)” category, which also includes the ‘Love
song’ and Christmas carol. The concept that Christian music is only defin-
able through its lyrical content is supported by other authors (e.g., Price
1999). Marino, however, goes on to propose that Christian music is nei-
ther a proper genre, nor style, but more a ‘type’ or ‘area’ of music, which
he asserts is the equivalent of Shuker’s “metagenres” (2013), Holt’s
“abstract genres” (2007), and Fabbri’s “superordinate categories” (2014)
(ibid., 13). Such a position is not uncontested. Lena and Peterson, restrict-
ing themselves to music genres that operate in the commercial market-
place, see genres as potentially moving through four forms: Avant-garde,
Scene-based, Industry-based, and finally to a Traditionalist form (2008,
700). As contemporary Christian music (CCM), and thus its subgenre,
CCS, commenced as (Christian/church) ‘Scene-based’ expressions of
existing genres (rock/pop/folk) rather than as a substantially new musical
idiom, Lena and Peterson see CCM, and presumably CCS, as Scene-based
and Industry-based forms of a music genre, still too young to arrive at its
Traditionalist form (ibid., 710).
Christian music, for many scholars, seems to be one of the more abstract
and difficult music genres to qualify, beyond its lyrical content. However,
CCS are a special case of Christian music, not specifically dealt with by any
of the above-mentioned authors. A more detailed, concrete, and nuanced
definition of the CCS genre is not only possible but important to the dis-
course. I propose the following definition: Towards its centre, the CCS
genre can be defined as songs that are popular music oriented, written by
Christian worshippers, relatively easily replicable in vernacular contexts,
memorable, containing lyrics that are theologically resonant to their per-
formers (congregation), and are personally meaningful. Furthermore, I
posit that there are a large number of musical, lyrical, and extra-musical
features, which are consistent across the corpus, and thus define the genre.
The rest of this book is devoted to supporting, justifying, and extrapolat-
ing on these assertions.
Perspectives on CCS History

Some excellent scholarship has already been published on the history of
contemporary worship. Most recently, Swee Hong Lim and Lester Ruth
compiled a relatively comprehensive account, even if it was US-centric,
entitled Lovin’ on Jesus: A Concise History of Contemporary Worship. One
of the important features of their work is to go beyond the discussions of
musical style which tends to dominate contemporary worship discussions,
as well as address concepts of time and space, prayer and preaching, and
sacramentality. The limitations of such a history are that only two chapters
can be devoted to the evolution of the contemporary congregational song
genre, one from its origins through the 1980s, and the other from the
1990s to the ‘present’. Thus, only broad brushstrokes can be employed to
cover the songs that have created and shaped the developing genre, which
the authors acknowledge, stating, “Our goal is not an exhaustive survey of
contemporary worship music but a sampling of important milestones in its
history” (Lim and Ruth 2017, 60).
The authors’ own backgrounds reveal a particular slant to that history.
They state that the rhythm section (piano, guitar, and drums) used in the
New Zealanders David and Dale Garrett’s Scripture in Song recordings of
the early 1970s was a sound that was “unfamiliar to the church culture of
the day but growing more familiar in popular culture” (Lim and Ruth
2017, 62). However, various strands of Pentecostalism had featured such
rhythmically driven ensembles since their inception. In an account of the
black Pentecostal church in America of the early 1900s, Booker speaks of
“improvisation, shout-ing [sic], and drumming produced by hand-
clapping and foot stomping … [it was] the African traditions that the
plantation ‘invisible church’ had kept alive” (Booker 1988, 39). In turn,
Rock ‘n’ Roll and emerging popular musics of the 1950s and 1960s owed
a great deal to the influences of African American spirituals, gospel music,
and particularly to Pentecostal worship (Stephens 2018). Lim and Ruth
do acknowledge “corresponding” African American developments in con-
gregational song. However, the ‘new sound’ of contemporary congrega-
tional songs emerging in the 1960s and 1970s was already embedded in a
number of Pentecostal traditions and re-invigorated and expanded
through the charismatic renewal of that period. From my own experience,
as a child of the charismatic renewal in Australia, worship infused with
popular music was not something we adopted, but rather something that
was a native expression, evolving with whatever current generation was
8 D. THORNTON
worshipping and evangelising. I certainly acknowledge that that was not

the case for many traditional churches, but the charismatic churches
emerging in the 1970s in Australia were birthed with such a musical ori-
entation, owing much to Pentecostalism.
In two final paragraphs, Lim and Ruth attempt to summarise various
strands of development in contemporary worship music since the 2000s.
While the summary is accurate and helpful, we are now talking about
almost two decades of further development in the genre. The current iter-
ation of the contemporary congregational song genre is therefore still in
great need of scholarly attention, which is the focus of this study.
Selected Scholarship
On the topic of contemporary worship scholarship, the majority of
researchers have engaged in ethnographic/ethnomusicological or phe-
nomenological approaches (e.g., Adnams 2008; Hall 2006; Ingalls
2008; Jennings 2008; Ingalls 2018; Ingalls and Yong 2015), which is
arguably the combined result of a young research field and one that
often defines itself experientially (Jennings 2014; Vondey and Mittelstadt
2013, 10). Sociology, cultural, and religious studies have informed such
research, though many of these researchers consider themselves primar-
ily as ethnomusicologists, a discipline which has been typically associated
with the study of ‘other’ musics (Bohlman 2008, 100–101; Nooshin
2008, 72–73). The lens, then, is often that of the participant-observer
coming in from the outside to gain an understanding of the music and
its culture, rather than of the musical native exploring music from his/
her naturally ‘emic’ perspective (Thornton 2015). Even when scholars
are inside settings where CCS have infiltrated their church’s worship, as
Ingalls describes (2018, 23), the resulting scholarship is not the type of
‘insider’ research that this study represents. As a child of the charismatic
renewal, birthed in a charismatic church, the ‘worship wars’ were only
something I heard about well into my adulthood as I engaged with
churches in other denominations. I do not suppose that this experience
gives me any privileged position for scholarship regarding CCS, how-
ever, it is this perspective that has been lacking in much contemporary
congregational music-making scholarship and brings a needed breadth
to the field.
The ethnomusicological studies described above often excel at identify-
ing specific practices and perspectives, engaging with, and extrapolating
upon, theoretical positions related to CCS and their communities.

However, as their focus is on those communities, the songs themselves,
including specific musicological concerns, are often peripheral to any anal-
yses. There is an important place for ethnomusicological analysis in con-
temporary congregational songs; however, it is not the natural discipline
to explore contemporary congregational songs as a genre. The following
section continues the survey of historical contemporary congregational
song/contemporary worship research in order to establish the need for
this study and its methodology.
One of the notable earlier scholars to engage with churches’ utilisation
of popular music styles in worship is Harold Best, although this was not
his sole focus (1993). He promulgates musical pluralism and challenges
those who argue for the morality of music apart from lyrics. He also chal-
lenges preconceptions of musical value judgements; which Christians can
be quick to exercise. He advocates the new, both musically and techno-
logically. However, for all of this, he neither proposes nor exemplifies a
methodology instructive for the research of contemporary congregational
songs as a genre. Corbitt’s The Sound of the Harvest: Music’s Mission in
Church and Culture (1998), on the other hand, provides many method-
ological considerations for researching congregational song. Corbitt
comes closest to attempting a framework for the congregational song; it is
a simple one, but still informative. He proposes three essential attributes
of the effective congregational song: that they should be singable, that the
music should be danceable, and that they should contain a meaningful
message (1998, 265). This notion of singability is a core quality scruti-
nised throughout this book at each analytical level, although particularly
in Chaps. 6 and 8.
Corbitt’s surprising second quality—that the music should be dance-
able—resonates with extant scholarship on the somatic nature of popular
music (Hesmondhalgh 2013, 29; Middleton 1993; Whiteley 2013), as
well as with the embodied nature of Pentecostal theology (Vondey and
Mittelstadt 2013, 10–12). Contemporary congregational songs’ ‘dance-
able’ quality has been observed by many authors (e.g., Ingalls 2008;
Jennings 2014; Wagner 2013), and though still controversial as it may
sometimes be, it is fundamental to the genre, if not to all of its localised
expressions. Finally, the significance of ‘meaningful messages’ in CCS is
one of the central concerns undergirding the chosen methodology for this
research.
10 D. THORNTON
Corbitt concludes:
The meaning of music resides in people, not in sounds. In a general sense,

our evaluation of music has more to do with the people who make it, per-
form it, and respond to it and the context in which it is performed than the
music itself. (1998, 33)
In this way, Corbitt reiterates the ideas of his sociomusicological con-

temporaries. What is notable in his work, however, is his ability to hold in
tension these sociomusicological concerns with textual analysis and music
psychology. His analytical approach does have limitations. For example,
Corbitt proposes that an appropriate analysis of CCS musical texts would
comprise three steps. First, a non-judgemental analysis of the music, where
Corbitt suggests we should ask, “What is the message of the song actually
preaching?” (1998, 178). Second, the song should be “compared to both
cultural norms and biblical standards” (ibid.), and finally, conclusions
should be drawn about the “directives of the message”.
Corbitt’s focus is clearly on the lyrical content and therefore only really
useful within that scope of analysis. Even his comment that “[b]ecause
texts of music are written within cultural, historical, political, and even
economic contexts, their meaning must first be discovered within that
context” (ibid., 181), which rewardingly could have been explored across
the ‘total musical fact’, is only applied to a lyrical analysis.
In affirming songs as the pre-eminent form of Christian worship,
Quantz advocates more of a musicological focus, in at least the first three
of the four ways he believes congregational songs can be “meaningful and
effective” (Quantz 2009, 36). First, he proposes composers of vocal music
adopt a limited range and tessitura. Second, he calls for congregational
songs to have less rhythmic complexity than “instrumental music”. Third,
he promotes melodic contours that generally favour smaller intervals,
especially step movement. Finally, Quantz says that while not everyone
can play a musical instrument, all can sing, thus affirming the universality
of songs in worship. In agreement with at least Quantz’s first and third
propositions, the vocal range and tessitura of representative CCS will be
analysed, as will the intervallic structures of melody—building on the
work of Schellenberg (Schellenberg 1996a, b; Schellenberg and Trehub
1996; Stalinski and Schellenberg 2010). Unfortunately, Quantz does not
define which instrumental music CCS should be compared with, but given
the growing rhythmic complexity of much CCS, compared to hymns,
many of the most sung songs in contemporary churches may not resolve
his criteria. Agreement for the universality of songs in worship has already
been justified earlier.
Begbie’s (2007) contribution is interesting in its attempt to create,
from biblical text and history, an approach involving “Christian ecology”
which utilises Creation as a framework. He is particularly interested in
applying this to musical theologians and theological musicians. Rather
than a theology of worship, Begbie works towards a theology of music,
which does not attempt to promote or demote any particular musical
style. In one sense then, it lacks a ‘position’ on contemporary musical wor-
ship and the believer, except to spread a very wide interpretation of
Creation and humanity’s position in the Christian ecology. Three of his
notable contentions include: “[that] pieces of music typically possess an
aesthetic integrity … they operate metaphorically, generating a surplus of
meaning … [and that] music is very context friendly” (Begbie 2007, 57).
There is a veiled warning here, as heard elsewhere, that analyses that pur-
port positivist song meaning will quickly reveal their limitations. There is
also the insight that people easily reinterpret music based on the setting in
which they experience it, a notion supported by DeNora’s wider, secular
sociomusicological research (2000), and examined specifically in relation
to CCS lyrics in Chap. 9. Begbie advocates thinking of music in a Christian
ecology that is neither escapist nor imperialist. Others who have sought an
inclusive framework for Christians’ interaction with all popular music
whether in consumption or creation include Faulkner (2012), Joseph
(2003), Howard and Streck (2004), and Marsh and Roberts (2013).
Sacramental theology is a framework through which Marsh and
Roberts, and Lim and Ruth in a more limited context (2017, 121–40),
explore popular music. Marsh and Roberts suggest this convergent theo-
logical approach to popular music has growing interest—that popular
music can be a “channel of the self-revelation of God, or of the grace of
God” (37). Their attempt to align Christian perspectives of popular music
with Daniel Levitin’s The World in Six Songs (2008) is admirable, though
unnecessary and from certain perspectives problematic, given Levitin’s
evolutionary, and ultimately scientifically reductive orientation. However,
the most compelling aspect of their work is the creation of the ‘Magisteria-
Ibiza Spectrum’ to describe ‘affective space’ in which people consume
popular music (including CCS). The authors describe affective space as
“any practice or activity that entails significant emotional engagement,
through which a person can be shown to do more than just enjoying the
moment” (16). The spectrum allows for a high level of complexity and
12 D. THORNTON
potentially overwhelming configurations in examining music consump-

tion and meaning-making (Fig. 1.1).
They conclude that:
[f]or those to whom music is at all significant, then, music is part of the self-
shaping process and a means of discovering and expressing who we believe
ourselves to be. In a clear sense, we are our playlists. (ibid., 111)
The relevance of this to CCS is particularly in the analysis of Christians’

reception, perception, and understanding of CCS, as undertaken in Chaps.
6 and 7.
With a backdrop of the theological study of the cultural significance of
popular music, Marsh and Roberts list seven functions of music:
• Music orders and organises time

• Music brings people together
• Music exercises the body
• Music expresses values
• Music enables participation
• Music provides a way of channelling emotion
• Music can be seen to shape life (ibid., 130–132).
All of these are readily applied to the live corporate1 worship experience
of churches utilising CCS; alongside which, the authors identify four
dominant themes in people’s use of popular music, including transcen-
dence, embodiment, connectedness, and ritual (ibid., 146–153). Thus,
while these authors do not set out to analyse CCS per se, the framework
provides valuable insights and tools to do so.
What is clearly missing from the literature, as discussed throughout this
section, is a comprehensive analysis of contemporary congregational songs
as a global music genre, which takes into account the diverse disciplinary
methods which would best inform such an analysis.
1
This term is used many times throughout the book as it is commonly used by those inside
contemporary church worship practices. Corporate worship refers to the worship of the
gathered body of believers, most often a Sunday service, but could equally be other subsets
of the local church worshipping together.
Magisteria Ibiza
A B C D
Norms Family “Pick ‘n’ mix” You can be
Generational “whatever you
Political party Hybridity want to be”
legacy
Institutional Antiauthoritarian “I know what I like”
Fan community
Political theorists
+ policy-makers “I just want
Group of friends “I can do what I want”
‘Web police” to escape”
“Affective Space”
Conformity School/College/ Authenticity “It’s what I feel
Media Moguls Learning group Nonhierarchical that matters”
Corporate
Faith community “I’m here to
The Magisterium “Experience not
enjoy the film” rules”
Mainstream Sports team
Governing bodies Play Self-expression
Arts/Media Reading/ Bricolage

Feeling over
critics arts group
“Out of thinking
the box”
Fig. 1.1 The Magisteria-Ibiza Spectrum (Marsh and Roberts, 2013, 19; excerpt from Personal Jesus by Clive Marsh and
Vaughan S. Roberts, copyright © 2012. Used by permission of Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group)
1 CONTEMPORARY CONGREGATIONAL SONGS GENRE FORMATION…
13
14 D. THORNTON
Why Music Semiology? (Texts, Writers, Audience)

Much modern scholarship is interdisciplinary. There is a recognition that
siloed disciplines have honed expertise in their own methods and method-
ology, however, that same focus also limits the discipline’s capacity to fully
investigate certain subjects. Thus, subjects with multiple facets can often
benefit from interdisciplinary research. In order to bring these disciplines
together, either research must be collaborative, or an individual researcher
must gain a reasonable proficiency in the various methodologies she seeks
to employ. Additionally, the danger of a multi-disciplinary analysis is that
the researcher might ‘cherry-pick’ aspects of methods which suit her pur-
pose, rather than allowing the methodological tools to govern her research.
There is also the danger that the researcher may not be able to adequately
master the intricacies of multiple methods or may not be able to facilitate
a fruitful dialogue between them once the individual parts of the research
are complete.
An understanding of the contemporary congregational song genre is
necessarily interdisciplinary. They are songs, which mean musicological
methods are relevant, but they are also popular music, which requires
employing broader methods from popular music studies, including sociol-
ogy and cultural studies. They are highly mediated in our twenty-first-
century world, requiring tools from media studies. CCS contain Christian
lyrics, which means theological and biblical studies need to be employed.
As already noted, they also historically originated from Pentecostal/char-
ismatic settings, and are still highly influenced by them, which means
Pentecostal studies has a place. At the same time, they are employed in a
long line of Christian worship expressions which is the domain of liturgical
studies, if not also ritual studies. Then there is the fact that they are appro-
priated and performed by amateur musicians and singers in diverse con-
texts, which means they are subject to the rubrics of vernacular music
studies. To understand what CCS mean to Christians in those diverse con-
texts, ethnographic and cultural studies methods are important. To under-
stand what CCS mean to those who compose, record, distribute, and
promote them, qualitative methods, such as a thematic analysis of inter-
views, are required. There is no doubt other disciplines would also be
informative. The point is that, obviously, it is impossible for a single tome
to comprehensively employ the array of relevant disciplines and methods
meaningfully and effectively. The question remains, what then is the ideal
way to choose which disciplines/methods will provide the greatest
understanding of the genre within the limitations discussed? It is to this

question which music semiology posed a possible answer.
Meaning-making is a fundamental frame for understanding music.
While music is not a language in its strict sense, it functions in ways akin
to language. There is a communication from one human, or many in the
case of a band or ensemble, to other humans. There are basic musical ele-
ments which are combined in myriad ways to express something. Music
contains phrases, repetition, ways to emphasise, connotations, call and
response, and an endless array of other facets of language, yet for all of it,
music is not language, at least not with definitive meanings. For example,
a C Major chord (C E G) may mean something, but it is not pre-defined,
nor does every composer intend it to mean the same thing (if indeed they
intend it to mean anything at all), nor does every listener interpret it the
same way. It may have meaning internally within the composition, for
example, in a piece in C Major, it would be the tonic chord, with all that
implies depending on the genre. It may have some external reference to a
simple summer’s morning, or to a positive emotion, or to a character in a
story. Whatever meaning might be intended or assigned, humans make
meaning from music. With these complexities in mind, a French scholar,
Jean-Jacques Nattiez proposed a three-part music semiology as a way to
most fruitfully analyse what he calls, the “total music fact”.
Nattiez maintained that while music had the capacity “to give rise to a
complex and infinite web of interpretants” (1990, 37), they could be
divided into three centres of analysis which inform one another through
dialogue. First, there is the composer and the production milieu that sur-
rounds her. Nattiez called this the poietic perspective. It investigates what
layers of meaning might have been intentionally or unintentionally sown
into the original fabric of the music throughout the production process.
As such, it involves whatever qualitative disciplinary methods which yield
the inner thoughts and intents of composers, as well as methods which
adequately account for the spectrum of influences surrounding the com-
position, production, promotion, and mediation of the music.
Second, Nattiez recognised that each individual listener creates her
own meaning in the music with which she engages. This, he called the
esthesic perspective. People are unique and bring their own history, educa-
tion, cultural heritage, personality, mood, and moment to the interpreta-
tion of music. The meanings they read into music are real for them. These
meanings may change over time, or as listeners discuss their various per-
spectives with others, but ultimately no matter what the composer
16 D. THORNTON
intended or the texts imply, music is meaningful because it is meaningful

to the individual. Methods that reveal how people engage with and inter-
pret particular music add a vital dimension to our understanding of
that music.
Third, there are the musical texts themselves, the original bastion of
musicology. In the Western Art Music tradition, these texts (often the
written musical score) were reified as the arbiter of all musical meaning. If
it was not in the score, it was not important or authoritative. Much has
changed in both scholarship and cultural practice, however, the potential
is that analysis swings the other way and the texts are reduced to mere
representations of music and not given due consideration for their own
capacity to contain and convey meaning. This immanent or neutral level
analysis, as Nattiez defines it, also involves other methods which explore
potential meaning in the musical texts. Both terms, ‘immanent’ and ‘neu-
tral level’, are less than ideal for this study. ‘Neutral’ connotes the idea of
a lack of bias, and additionally may imply that the poietic and esthesic
analyses are not neutral. ‘Immanent’ is better, referring to that which is
inherent to the text(s). However, it also has theological implications which
are called upon in this research. In order to keep the analysis of the texts
separate from the theological discussion, another term is preferable. Given
that this level of analysis deals with texts, written or recorded, it might
have been called textual analysis. However, this term is already deeply
embedded in communication research methods, and therefore, if used
here, it would drag its own baggage into this level of analysis. It cannot be
called the musicological level, as other disciplines are additionally required
for this stage of music semiological research, such as media studies and
theology. A term Nattiez also adopts in discussing this stage of the analysis
is the ‘trace’. The trace is the symbolic musical form that “is embodied
physically and materially … accessible to the five senses”, in other words,
the musical text(s) (Nattiez 1990, 12). Though Nattiez doesn’t settle on
this, it is this term, to my mind, that supplies the cleanest and clearest
description of this stage of the analysis, and from this point onwards is
called “trace analysis”.2
As mentioned, in this holistic approach to analysing music, the three
levels of analysis are not static or definitive, but in a dialectic, constantly
negotiating and renegotiating our understanding of that music. In one
2
I acknowledge that trace analysis is also a method in scientific analysis; however, it is far
enough away from this field to not cause any unnecessary complexity.
sense, such an approach is not radical. The music sociologist, Longhurst,

created on the surface a similar framework of analysing production, text,
and audience (Longhurst 2014). Ethnomusicology might also approach
music with these meaning-making centres in mind (Muir 2019). It is at
this point that I have to confess that I am not an evangelistic music semio-
tician. There are many aspects to Nattiez’s methodology that are laudable,
such as the even attention to three significant levels of musical significa-
tion, the ability to articulate an evolving understanding of music, the
acknowledgement of the limitations of analysing music in the first place,
and the expressed limitations of using language to articulate musical analy-
sis. Additionally, such a framework gives purpose and guidance to interdis-
ciplinary research. Nevertheless, there are limitations.
Musical value is not limited to musical meaning, and musical meaning
is not limited to semiology. Indeed, semiotics as a methodology is rejected
by Moore in analysing meaning in popular music (Moore 2012, 9).
DeNora felt the limitations of musicology’s conventional concern with the
music ‘object’ which she contends “highlight[s] why semiotic analysis is
not sufficient as a means of addressing the question of music’s affect in
practice, music’s role in daily life” (DeNora 2000, 27). Despite this per-
ceived weakness, DeNora seems to echo Nattiez’s esthesic understanding
in this statement; “…music’s ‘effects’ come from the ways in which indi-
viduals orient to it, how they interpret it and how they place it within their
personal musical maps, within the semiotic web of music and extra-musical
associations” (DeNora 2000, 61). Part of the issue with music semiology
is the lack of agreement among semioticians regarding their methodology,
something Nattiez spends the first half of his book clarifying. As Salgar
summarises,
musical semiotics is a doubly cryptic activity. Its practitioners can be seen as

a group of initiates who, by an accident of fate, have acquired understand-
ings of Western notation, harmony, counterpoint, music history, and in
addition, semiology … [and] have difficulties in communicating with schol-
ars in other fields. (Salgar 2016, 4)
Semiotics is challenging enough without the added complexity and

subjectivity bought on by the nature of music and the question of music
18 D. THORNTON
signification.3 For all of those reasons, it has fallen out of favour as a disci-
pline, on top of which there has not risen a scholar to champion its resur-
rection. I do not suppose that I am such a champion or that my use of it
will solve all the historical issues. However, it is arguably a useful overarch-
ing discipline to explore the contemporary congregational song genre,
following in the footsteps of Evans (2006).
Though Nattiez’s focus is on Western Art Music, his statement below
acutely applies to the experiential and embodied nature of popular and
vernacular musics, including CCS:
Because it is a metalanguage, musical analysis cannot substitute for the lived

experience of the musical. If analysis should achieve this substitution, that
would mean that discourse is the musical piece itself. The relationship
between experienced musical reality and discourse about music is necessarily
an oblique one. The musical metalogue is, moreover, always full of gaps.
(Nattiez 1990)
The CCS genre is so profoundly praxis-oriented and experiential, the

linguistic nature of any research is faced with the inadequacies of musical
analysis and discourse to articulate its multitudinous and multisensory fac-
ets. This book as musical metalogue, like all others as Nattiez states, will
inevitably be “full of gaps”, which can only be bridged by actual engage-
ment with the music itself and an experience of its contexts of perfor-
mance. I trust that this book is not read in isolation to an experience of
CCS in their various contexts. I additionally wish that more books exam-
ining CCS would explicitly acknowledge the limitations of language to
understand the music with which the authors engage.
Thus, the scholarly framework for this volume is established. The inter-
disciplinary methods employed throughout the music semiological analy-
sis of each of the three layers for this research are set out in the following
chapters. First, for the poietic level (Chaps. 3, 4, and 5), semi-structured
interviews were conducted with six key CCS composers/worship leaders
and two CCS industry veterans. To ensure a broad cross-section of per-
spectives, there were both female and male interviewees, representing
multiple generations of CCS writers, as well as different global centres of
3
Although semiology is technically a subset of semiotics, its usage by Nattiez is not as nar-
row as its Saussurean origins. The subtle distinctions between semiology and semiotics,
though important, are not required to be differentiated for this research. What Nattiez calls
semiology is probably more accurately, semiotics.
CCS production. Additionally, song story videos, where publicly available,

were watched and analysed for all of the most sung CCS. The next step
involved applying a six-phase thematic analysis process as detailed by
Braun and Clarke (2006). An inductive approach was applied to allow
themes to emerge from the data (ibid., 83–84).
The esthesic level of investigation poses the greatest challenge (Chaps.
6 and 7). Enough individual perspectives need to be acquired to gain the
broadest possible understanding of Christians’ reception, cognition, and
interpretation of CCS. Australia’s NCLS provided an ideal source for
these perspectives, given the approximately 1800 people from 20 denomi-
nations who completed the Attender Form C in 2011, specifically address-
ing questions around worship and music. Additionally, the Operations
Survey from the same period, filled in by one person from each church
involved, gave greater context and insight to Christians’ engagement with
CCS in church services. The one limit to this data is that it was by and
large quantitative, with questions having multiple choice or bifurcated
options. While undoubtedly informative, esthesic research also benefits
from qualitative data, in this case finding out what CCS Christians indi-
vidually might choose to sing, and how that might sound outside of the
context of a worship service. I created and conducted such a survey online,
comprising written and audio-recorded sections, with 214 participants
contributing. Statistical analysis of the NCLS data was undertaken using
the SPSS Statistics software, and qualitative analysis was applied to the
online survey.
Finally, the trace analysis of the musical texts—written scores, live or
recorded performances, mediated performances—require a variety of
tools, including musicology, popular and vernacular music studies, theol-
ogy, biblical studies, and media studies (Chaps. 8, 9, 10, and 11). Again,
given the limitations of this single volume, the optimal number of songs
to analyse was determined by the top songs lists of five regions (Australia,
Canada, New Zealand, UK, and USA) from one of Christian Copyright
Licensing International’s recent royalty reports (October 2018). Of all
songs in the top 25 Church Copyright License (CCL) lists, 32 songs were
highly ranked in more than one region, indicating their global status, and
form the basis for the analysis of CCS as a global music genre. A discussion
of how these 32 songs are representative of the genre as a whole is found
in Chap. 2.
20 D. THORNTON
YouTube: The Primary Text

The question of which texts to analyse is pertinent to the trace analysis.
The original recorded version of a song has its own canonical authority,
but may not be the most popular, nor the version that popularised the
song for local churches. The sheet music alone does not reveal crucial
features of the song which are apparent in a recording or performance.
The analysis of sheet music does have its place, but even then, a consistent
and authorised version is required. Live performances provide vital insights
into the nuances of the song and its co-performance by the congregation,
which commercial recordings may obscure. Furthermore, as the stated
purpose is to analyse the global CCS genre, what texts are globally avail-
able? CCLI’s SongSelect is the easy answer for the written score. SongSelect
is available in all regions’ CCLI licences and is the dominant source of
sheet music for licensed churches, as reported in CCLI’s reproduction
licences. Furthermore, the sheet music they make available is consistent
and approved by the copyright owners. However, given the way most
Christians engage with CCS, the primary text needs to be some recorded
version (Evans 2002, 9–10; Moore 2001; Hayward 1998), and video has
clearly replaced audio as “the primary cultural object” (Auslander
2008, 106).
YouTube is the pre-eminent global streaming service for the most pop-
ular recorded versions of the most sung CCS. Reports suggest that there
are 900 million to 1 billion global regular users of YouTube (“IFPI Global
Music Report 2016” 2016; “Recording Industry in Numbers” 2013, 26).
The largest providers of music videos on YouTube are VEVO (a conglom-
erate content provider from Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music
Group, and EMI) and Warner Music Sound. In fact, of all YouTube chan-
nels, these represent two of the top three (ibid.). Furthermore, nine of the
ten most-viewed videos on YouTube are music videos.
YouTube is free from the prosumer’s/produser’s perspective (Tschmuck
2012, 248). It facilitates the easy sharing of songs through social media or
via URL links. It is available anytime and anywhere the Internet is acces-
sible, given suitable bandwidth. Furthermore, this streaming music phe-
nomenon has also become foundational in the teaching/learning of
CCS. The pre-music-streaming-services practice of churches copying CDs
or cassette tapes for worship team members to learn songs was compli-
cated and ultimately illegal. CCLI has for many years been aware that such
practices were at odds with copyright law, but until recently did not have
a viable solution. CCLI needed cooperation from both the song owner
and the Master Recording owner to create a ‘rehearsal licence’ for
churches, and their historical relationship had only been with song
owners. In the absence of such a licence, churches look for alternatives,
and YouTube provides one. Every song found in any of the CCLI ‘top
songs lists’ has tens if not hundreds of representations on YouTube.
The view count of CCS videos on YouTube mostly represents individ-
ual watchers. This individual activity verifies people’s engagement with
specific CCS, in other words, a ‘view’ is a person watching/listening to the
song. Thus, a large view count indicates a higher level of public engage-
ment than a small view count. In this way, YouTube CCS data provides a
valuable counterbalance to CCLI data, which only measures song usage
inside church services. For the purpose of this research, YouTube is used
to ensure that the analysed songs are representative of the global choices
of individual Christians, and not just of choices made on behalf of congre-
gations by those in charge of local corporate worship.
Keil argues that “in class society the media of the dominant class must
be utilised for [a vernacular] style to be legitimated” (cited in Frith 1998,
231). If Keil is right, CCS must exist on YouTube if they are to be a ‘legiti-
mate’ popular music genre. YouTube is currently the dominant streaming
media platform of global society. As CCS exist on YouTube, the form and
content they assume become the legitimised version of the genre. No mat-
ter what other versions are available to consumers, CCS on YouTube are
authoritative. With that in mind, and the arguments set forth above, the
identified most sung global CCS from the CCLI data (discussed in Chap. 2)
were cross-referenced to YouTube views. Highly viewed songs affirmed
that the chosen CCS were globally representative of the genre.
It is impossible to individually survey the mass YouTube audience, and
it is not known whether viewers watched these mediations before they
sang them in their local church, or whether they went looking for them on
YouTube because they had sung them in their local church. Furthermore,
this binary does not adequately address the complex ways in which viewers
may ultimately come to watch a CCS video. However, it is important to
establish the level of influence YouTube has in the popularisation of
CCS. None of the YouTube mediations of the most sung CCS were
uploaded before 2006 and the median year was 2013. This is no doubt
related to the timelines of broader streaming musical media adoption,
which Holt states, “spread rapidly around 2008 and became evident to
many in 2009” (Holt 2011, 51). Twelve of the 32 most sung CCS,
22 D. THORNTON
however, were written before 2008. Many of these older songs were chart-
ing highly on the CCLI reports long before they had YouTube representa-
tion. In the pre-broadband/mobile Internet era, people’s first interaction
with a song was through radio/TV, or the purchase of the CD, or the
experience of the song at a conference or church service. The weight of
those activities has changed. A survey by CCLI founder, Howard Rachinski
(2014), indicated that the greatest method for discovering new music for
churches was through the Internet (42%), although now six years on, this
would undoubtedly be much higher. While that survey did not give par-
ticipants the option to specify a preferred site, YouTube’s own statistics
indicate its primacy in online music discovery and engagement.
CCS over the last decade must have representation on YouTube to cre-
ate the momentum that they now co-create through album sales, radio/
TV airtime, or conference exposure. However, these do not have to be
official music videos. In fact, only half of the videos analysed were officially
produced and uploaded to official channels; the other videos were
uploaded by fans. Some of those were official videos ripped by fans and
uploaded, such as “Mighty to Save”. However, these tended to be older
uploads as worship producers have progressively realised the importance
of uploading official video content as early as possible. Only a few years
ago, background nature pictures with overlaid large white font lyrics were
the typical YouTube mediation of popular CCS, as Chaps. 10 and 11
will attest.
Why nature pictures were the background of choice for CCS fan-
created videos is worthy of some speculation here in terms of the trace
analysis. First, nature for many Christians is synonymous with Creation,
no matter whether one holds to a creationist or evolutionist position in
regard to its origins. The Bible confirms nature’s affirmation of God
(Romans 1:20) and its role in His praise (1 Chronicles 16:33; Psalm 148;
Isaiah 44:23). Second, nature pictures are so accessible, whether person-
ally photographed or ‘Googled’. Third, there is an aesthetic beauty in
nature photography that would otherwise require great skill (and time) to
reproduce in drawings, paintings, or digital artwork. Moreover, copyright
ownership may be more equivocal in nature photography than it is in
other artistic formats. Finally, the simple white font lyrics provide a legible
and satisfactory contrast to the rich colours of the background picture; the
picture does not obscure or compete with the lyrics.
Whatever the visual content of CCS YouTube videos is, it is subservient
to the music. As Goodwin astutely observes, “in terms of their use-value
to the audience, music videos need to be studied primarily in relation to

popular music, rather than in relation to television or cinema” (Goodwin
1993, xxii). Video content certainly adds elements of meaning and nuance
to the songs, especially to ‘live worship’ videos. Nevertheless, there is a
clear intent in CCS YouTube videos to champion the song itself within its
genre parameters (Thornton and Evans 2015). For example, in ‘live wor-
ship’ videos, there is a conscious choice of shots to include the congrega-
tion, to project the words over the video, and thus to promote the
participatory nature of CCS, a core quality of the genre. These features of
CCS are further explored in the trace analysis chapters.
While we might now replace the word “mechanization” with “mediati-
zation” or at least “mediation”, in the following quote, Byrnside was
insightful to declare back in 1975 that “mechanization is as important to
the popularity of a given song as are its musical and textual components”
(cited in Moore 2007, 170). Mediation of CCS is no longer simply an
issue of distribution but a fundamental and authoritative expression of the
existence of the song. Whether Christians watch YouTube versions before
or after their introduction to those CCS, and whether those videos are
official or fan creative/uploaded, their existence on streamed online
media, YouTube, in particular, is a core feature of the genre.
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CHAPTER 2
Contemporary Congregational Songs
What’s in a Name?
Two issues need attention before undertaking the music semiological
analysis of the global contemporary congregational song genre. First,
there is the name persistently applied in the first chapter to these songs and
their genre. Most of this chapter is dedicated to the important discussion
of nomenclature, addressing the background and justification for the
term—contemporary congregational songs. Following that is a discussion
of the specific CCS that are under analysis, and how they are representa-
tive of the genre as a whole. It may at first be difficult to imagine that 32
songs could be indicative of the whole genre. However, the end of this
chapter will supply the justification and arguments to support such a claim.
Historically, practitioners, popular publications, industry, scholars, and
you (if you have been at all involved in practising or discussing contempo-
rary worship) have preferred alternative terms to contemporary congrega-
tional songs for this genre. ‘Praise and Worship’ (music) is probably the
most utilised and problematic term, especially in the popular press,
although also in scholarly literature (Hartje 2009; Walrath and Woods
2010). Other writers have used contemporary Christian worship music
(CCWM) or just contemporary worship music (Frame 1997; Ingalls
2008; Redman 2002). Each of these labels has semantic and theological
ambiguities which make them at least non-ideal terms, if not potentially
problematic ones.
© The Author(s) 2021 27

D. Thornton, Meaning-Making in the Contemporary
Congregational Song Genre,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55609-9_2
28 D. THORNTON
Names infer, signify, and connote. They exist within a broader intricate
web of semantics, language, and culture. Christians are not exempt from
this complex negotiation of meaning and have wrestled with the names
that define and shape their faith throughout the ages, whether they be
denominational identifiers, theological concepts, Scriptural precepts, or
‘Christianese’ vernacular. It is a combination of a particular understanding
of Scripture, ‘Christianese’, and the worship music industry that has bur-
dened us with the sticky term for personal, and corporate, musical expres-
sions of worship, namely, the genre (and practice) of ‘Praise and Worship’.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the term for this emerging genre was ‘cho-
ruses’ or ‘praise choruses’ (Eskridge 2008). It differentiated these new
popular music-oriented songs from traditional hymns as a contemporary
musical expression of corporate worship. Over time, as practice evolved
into industry and publications, the label, ‘Praise and Worship’, was adopted
as the preferred term to differentiate this genre from others in the market-
place. Many popular publications of the era promoted the use of the term;
Sorge’s Exploring Worship: A Practical Guide to Praise and Worship is a
typical example (1987). Sorge argued that all congregational songs could
be divided into either “praise” or “worship”. Furthermore, he inadver-
tently argued for the equivalence of those terms with song tempi—“fast”
(praise) or “slow” (worship), a sadly pervasive and perpetuated conflation
(Sorge 1987, 278–79).
As mentioned, the term ‘Praise and Worship’ did not achieve universal
consensus. Some scholars proposed alternative titles including contempo-
rary Christian worship music, or the more concise contemporary worship
music. Redman defines contemporary worship music (CWM) as “worship
music in the genres of popular music produced over the past thirty years
by North American Protestant recording and publishing companies,
churches, and individuals” (Redman 2002, 47). However, Redman also
problematically separates “the praise and worship movement” from the
“contemporary worship industry” as if such a distinction were easily or
obviously achievable.
In a related conundrum, Wren recognises the need to distinguish
between “contemporary Christian music [CCM]” (intended for profes-
sional performance) and “praise music” (Wren 2000, 131), a term he
adopts from Yee (1997). This is a widely accepted delineation. However,
while Wren initially uses the term “praise music”, he also sees it as prob-
lematic because “‘praise’ is not the only kind of song that is, or can be,
sung [in this style]”. Thus, Wren retreats to the term “contemporary
2 CONTEMPORARY CONGREGATIONAL SONGS 29
worship music”, without correspondingly acknowledging that “worship”

is not the only kind of song that is, or can be, sung in this style. Furthermore,
having settled on this term, Wren immediately capitulates to Webb’s six
major categories for contemporary worship music, one of which is “Praise
and Worship”. Wren views “Praise and Worship” as “the largest subgroup
within contemporary [worship] music” and spends the rest of the chapter
effectively not addressing Webb’s broad notion of contemporary worship
music, but the specific subgenre of “Praise and Worship” songs.
Ingalls, in setting up her dissertation, defends the term for this genre
she chooses—contemporary worship music—to use in her thesis (Ingalls
2008, 13–16). However, she is quick to recognise the challenges of such
a task. She justifies her use of “contemporary worship music” through the
earlier work of Frame and Redman. At the same time, she acknowledges
the ubiquitous term “Praise and Worship” and points out that these are
interchangeable in Walrath and Woods’ edited volume (2010). While sup-
porting the term “contemporary worship music”, Ingalls also acknowl-
edges some of its inadequacies as a genre descriptor, but its common usage
and affirmation from other writers ultimately prevail. Like Wren, Ingalls
sees “Praise and Worship” as a sub-category of contemporary worship
music. The reality is that most practitioners who talk about “Praise and
Worship” easily interchange the term with “contemporary worship music”,
or even just “worship”. To force a distinction is not only arbitrary, but in
my mind, does not advance the scholarship.
Praise and Worship Theology

While the historical conjecture over the label for this genre is informative,
it is ultimately the theological argument that weighs heaviest in this dialec-
tic. Evans states “[g]iven the … biblical concepts of worship and praise, it
is plainly evident that the generic ‘Praise and Worship’ tag for contempo-
rary congregational music is misleading” (2006, 53). The terms ‘praise’,
‘worship’, or ‘praise and worship’, cannot be divorced from their theologi-
cal foundations.
The nature of biblical worship is described by Peterson, in his book
Engaging with God, as the approach of, or engagement with, God on His
terms, involving “honouring, serving and respecting him, abandoning any
loyalty or devotion that hinders an exclusive relationship with him”
(Peterson 2002, 283). The absence of any musical reference in this fairly
typical definition of worship is noteworthy. In fact, all Hebrew and Greek
30 D. THORNTON
words for our equivalent English word ‘worship’ are non-musical; yet,
contemporary usage of the word has become synonymous with music, at
least in pentecostal-charismatic1 circles. Scripture clearly indicates that
music featured in both individual and corporate worship expressions, the
Psalms being just one example. However, the current interchangeability of
terms is neither biblical nor helpful. Recognising this, Carson notes that
there is a rich theological and biblical scope for our English word ‘wor-
ship’, but we constantly skew Christians’ perceptions of the word with our
usage—for example, ‘worship leader’, ‘time of worship’, and ‘worship
team’ (Carson 2010). At the same time, Carson articulates the struggle to
find a term for the specific activities of the gathered New Testament believ-
ers if ‘worship’ is to be awarded its broadest biblical meaning.
Numerous writers raise concern over contemporary usage of the word
‘worship’ and its dislocation from biblical, theological, and historical
foundations (Chant 2000; Evans 2006; Duncan 2009; Faulkner 2012). It
is not that worship cannot be sung, nor that the intimate aspects of wor-
ship (surrender, adoration, devotion) are not deeply connected to the
ways in which music can function for human beings. Rather, when wor-
ship is unintentionally pigeon-holed as song/singing, Christians lose the
profound scope of worship and its application to their whole lives. Scholars
have a responsibility to ensure that the language they use is accurate and
most helpful to their readers. Thus, when discussing this genre, it is most
helpful to avoid labels that perpetuate a limiting or skewed understanding
of Christian worship, which the current labels, as discussed, inevitably per-
petuate. With these considerations in mind, Evans posits that the most
useful and accurate label for this genre is contemporary congregational
songs (CCS) (2006, 45).
Contemporary for Whom?

While contemporary is a relative descriptor, rather than a concrete one, it
fulfils an important function within the proposed term. The median year
of composition of the 32 most sung songs under analysis is 2012. In fact,
1
This non-capitalised term is coined by Ingalls to differentiate denominational or for-
malised Pentecostal and charismatic expressions of Christianity from those exhibiting aspects
of Pentecostalism, particularly in relation to worship practices (Ingalls and Yong 2016, 4). I
find it useful because my own contexts of practice extend beyond Pentecostal denomina-
tions, better fulfilling the criteria of the pentecostal-charismatic term.
2 CONTEMPORARY CONGREGATIONAL SONGS 31
besides “How Deep the Father’s Love” (1995), “How Great Thou Art”
(1953), and “Shout to the Lord” (1993), none of the songs were written
before 2000. This alone would justify the term contemporary compared
to the age of hymns employed in traditional worship settings. Of course,
contemporary also has an alternative definition, whereby things simply
occur concurrently. Under that definition, whatever any congregation is
singing at their next service is contemporary, including 200-year-old
hymns. Clearly, such a definition is unhelpful here but must be acknowl-
edged as a potential weakness in the choice of this identifier. Interestingly,
the chosen definition of contemporary does impact the reinterpretation of
old hymns. “Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)” is on the most sung
CCS list because as a re-imagined hymn it is newly in copyright. The re-
imagination is not just the addition of a Chorus, but with the stylistic
expression of CCS.
Another argument for contemporary is that it appropriately correlates
with other popular music genres, such as ‘adult contemporary’ and ‘con-
temporary Christian music’ (CCM). Finally, the term contemporary offers
currency; it remains applicable even through the musical/lyrical evolution
that has already occurred over the last 50 years and will no doubt con-
tinue. Instead of limiting the genre to a chronologically bound term, con-
temporary is meaningful, inclusive, and adaptable.
Defining Congregational
Congregational incorporates several ideas. The Macquarie Dictionary
defines congregation (the root form) as “an assembly of persons met for
common religious worship”, as well as “an organisation formed for the
purpose of providing for worship of God…” (“Congregation” 2009).
Furthermore, under the adjectival definition of ‘congregational’, as
opposed to the capitalised version referring to the denomination, the
Macquarie Dictionary gives as its example ‘congregational singing’ (ibid.),
thus reinforcing the colloquial connection of these words as argued for
here. Congregational is the only part of the term that contextualises the
songs as Christian. Admittedly, the term could be perceived as not being
expressively Christian enough, or alternatively, too denominationally con-
notative (Congregationalism). However, the alternative term of ‘worship’
is not any more Christian. Many religions worship, but using congrega-
tional avoids the other issues already raised.
Another random document with
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was an hour giving orders and dispatching men to the planters, even
twenty miles off, for assistance.
For a week thereafter, day and night, I fairly lived on horseback at
the levee, superintending the repair work in place of my absent
husband and our inefficient overseer. Each planter affected by the
crevasse came, or sent an overseer with a force of slaves, who
worked in hour shifts, to their waists in the water, driving piles and
heaping sand bags. As the shifts changed the men were given a
dram and hot soup or coffee, and sent to a huge bonfire nearby to
dry themselves.
Another time I landed from a boat at the witching hour between
midnight and dawn. The boat’s bell and whistle sounded to attract
some light sleeper. By the time I was fairly ashore a glimmering light
of a lantern was seen. I was escorted to the house by the coachman,
but if any other negro had responded I should have felt quite as safe.
Mammy Charlotte was supreme in the domestic department. The
little cupbearers from the quarters reported to her for the “dreenings”
of the coffee pot or the left-over soup. The visitor by the library fire
called to her for a glass of wine or a “finger” of whisky. I called
Charlotte to ask what we were going to have for dinner. She was the
busy one, and every plantation had just such a mammy. Charlotte
and I belonged to the same church. When there was a vacant seat in
the carriage Sunday morning she was called to occupy it.
One of our neighbors, that a New Englander would call a “near”
man, owned a few acres adjoining ours, but too remote from his
plantation to be advantageously cultivated. He would not fence his
property nor work his road, nor keep his levee in repair (it was just
there we had the crevasse); however, it afforded good pasturage for
Uncle Billy’s cow, and for us, a supply of mushrooms. Billy’s nets and
lines supplied us with shrimp and fish, small catfish that William
cooked à la pompano, not a poor imitation of that delectable Gulf
dainty. I heard Charlotte berating Billy for not bringing in some more
of those fine shrimp, when he knew, too, there was company in the
house. Imagine my consternation at Billy’s reply, “Dey done gorn; dat
ole drowned mule is floated away.”
Col. Hicky was our nearest neighbor, on Hope estate. When the
dear old man was eighty and I was twenty-five we were great chums.
He never passed in his buggy if I was visible on the lawn or porch
without stopping for a chat. There was frequent interchange of
neighborly courtesies. He had fine large pecans, and we didn’t; we
had celery and he didn’t, so there was much flitting back and forth of
baskets. If we were having an unusual occasion, like the dinner my
husband gave in honor of Messrs. Slidell and Benjamin, when they
were elected to the United States Senate, a big basket came from
Hope estate. Didn’t the dear old gentleman send a capon turkey
which was too big for any dish we had, and didn’t we have to borrow
the Hicky dish?
Col. Hicky had a birthday dinner, when he was eighty-two, and a
grand dinner it was, to be sure. Sam Moore—I never knew just who
he was, or why he was so essential at every function—sat at the
host’s right. The Colonel was too deaf to hear all the bon mots, and
Sam interpreted for him, and read in a loud voice all the toasts, some
of which were very original and bright. Anyone remembering Col.
Winthrop, or better still, Judge Avery, can understand there was no
lack of wit and sparkle in any toast they might make.
XXVII
PEOPLE I HAVE ENTERTAINED
I imagine all of us have read “People I Have Smiled With,” or,

“People I Have Known,” but not many are writing about “People I
Have Entertained.” Rocking away the remnant of a long and varied
life, I find myself dreamingly entertaining guests who are long since
departed to the “House of Many Mansions,” guests who came and
stayed, and went, some of whom I had never seen before, and some
I never heard from after, but there are guests and guests, as every
housewife knows. Particularly country house guests come, whose
city houses are not open to what a neighbor of mine calls “trunk
visitors.” In the days of which I write, every house, especially every
plantation house, had a conspicuous latch string outside the door. I
amuse my grandchildren with tales of the varied assortment of
visitors I had “befo’ de war,” just as I had conjured to rest their
mothers and fathers when they clamored to be told again about the
gentleman who brought his own sheets and coffee pot, or the lady
who wanted to pray all the time. I feel I am telling these tales for the
last time. They don’t point a moral, for no guest can do to-day, nor
will hereafter, the things some of my guests did, let us think, in the
innocence of their hearts.
The first visitor I recall when I was a bride in my new home, was a
distinguished, eccentric, literary man, a bachelor, and a Creole, brim
full of cranks and kinks, but a delightful conversationalist withal.
Before he arrived I knew he was coming from a visit to an adjacent
parish where his great heart had been touched by the witchery of a
young girl. With his Sancho, the Don Quixote had been storming the
citadel, and to continue the simile he struck a windmill, and so was
put to flight. Now he was accepting my husband’s invitation to rest,
and salve his wounds at our home. I was amazed when my
housemaid told me he had not only brought his valet, but his own
linen sheets and his coffee pot! I understood then why he was not an
acceptable suitor. Linen sheets and the coffee pot would scare any
prospective housewife. When I knew what a blunder he had
committed, I confess to little sympathy in his discomfort. That old
gentleman died full of honors and deeply lamented, in New Orleans,
a few years ago.
Mrs. Breckinridge was our guest, while her husband was vice-
president. The presidential candidates, almost forgotten now, were
Buchanan and Breckinridge. She was active and eager to have her
husband mount to the top of the ladder of preferment, and did no
little engineering in his behalf that winter. Mrs. Breckinridge was
charming, a delightful visitor, a relative by marriage to us, but so
remote, that if she had not been so lovely and the vice-president so
distinguished, the dim connection would never have been thought of.
Her aspirations were not realized, and he was tail to another
presidential kite, that could not be made to fly. We did not meet Mrs.
Breckinridge after that long visit, and the last time I saw her husband
he was a fleeing Confederate general in Havana, without
incumbrance of any kind, so he was not our “trunk visitor.”
During the early fifties a planter from Bayou Lafourche bought a
plantation on the Mississippi River, fully five miles from us, and on
the opposite side of the river, as well. My husband, in his
grandiloquent flamboyant manner, invited him to bring his family to
our house to stay till their lares et penates were settled in their new
home. The man, in the same grandiloquent, flamboyant style,
accepted. When I asked how many there were in the family, my
hospitable husband replied that he only heard mention of a wife. In
due time a little Lafourche packet, with ever so much turning and
backing, blowing of whistle and ringing of bells, as if to announce a
surprise (which it certainly did), ran out a plank at our levee, and a
whole procession walked that plank and filed up the path to the
house. I looked from an upper window, and counted the guests as
they marched up, in twos and threes: A man and his wife, her aged
mother and brother, four boys, ranging from three to ten years, and a
darky with the baby in arms!
One guest room had been made ready, but three additional
chambers were at once put in commission. By the time wraps had
been removed and fresh fires made all over the house—it was mid-
winter—I was ten times more breathless than my unexpected crowd.
Every day for over a week the man and his wife were conveyed to
their new home in our carriage, and there they stayed from morn to
dewy eve. The aged grandmother was left in my special care. She
was unable to cope with the untrained boys, as, indeed, all of us
were. The uncle had rheumatism or something that confined him to
his bed most of the time. So the boys were left to their own devices,
to gallop in and out of doors, from the muddy garden to the Brussels
carpets, all hours of the day. The baby squalled, and the nurse
spanked it, and I didn’t care.
One stormy day the boys found occupation indoors that was very
diverting. They extracted every button from a tufted, upholstered
chair in the library, the one their grandmother most affected, and with
hairpin and nail, scratched hieroglyphics all over a newly-painted
mantel, till it looked like it had been taken from some buried city of
Egypt. Thank goodness! Visits don’t last forever. In the course of
time the family moved into the new home, and gave a house-
warming ball within the next week—vive la bagatelle!
Reading with great interest a newly published book, “The Circuit
Rider’s Wife,” brings vividly to mind a visitor we once had. She was
one of the sweetest and loveliest of women. She was a Methodist,
the only one in a wide acquaintance I ever met, who claimed to have
“the gift of sanctification.” I do not believe one possesses the power
within oneself to resist sin, nor do I mean to inject religious views
and doctrines in these remarks about “People I Have Entertained,”
but I do say, if there ever was a really sanctified woman it was this
Mrs. Abe Smith of Mississippi. She was our guest one short, happy,
glorified week. She read her Bible chapter to us every morning, and
prayed with and for us all day long, if we wanted, and we generally
did, for surely she had the gift of prayer. I never listened to such
uplifting prayers as dear Mrs. Smith could utter; her very voice was
an inspiration. She was highly connected and highly cultivated and
had a vocal training that comprised very intricate music, but with
“The Coming of the Lord” she confined her voice entirely to psalms
and hymns. Her mission was to pray and sing, but no doubt when
the harvest was waiting, in some meeting house, she could exhort
with an eloquence equal to the most earnest itinerant in the pulpit.
We had one strange glorification and sanctification, but it was
interrupted by the coming of a Methodist preacher, who claimed to
having sought, in vain, the gift of sanctification. The last few days of
lovely Sister Smith’s visit were spent in the library with closed doors,
wrestling with the halting soul of Brother Camp.
These were the expiring days of the old “Peace which passeth
understanding.” After that came the war, which sorely tried the heart
of the glorified woman, and she proved faithful to her gift of
sanctification even unto the bitter end....
One November day I entered my library with an open letter of
introduction in my hand, to say to the young man, placidly warming
himself at the fire, that the letter was not meant for my husband, who
was not at home, but for his brother. He replied he understood the
brother was not in Louisiana, and he took the liberty of transferring
the introductory epistle to the next of kin. He was a young doctor,
threatened with lung trouble, who had come South to spend some
time in somebody’s sugar house. I frankly told him that our sugar
house was not by any means a suitable place for an invalid, but (I
glanced out of the door and saw his vehicle had departed and his
trunk was on the porch) I would be pleased to have him remain my
guest until my husband returned to see what could be devised to
further the invalid’s plan. Northern and Western people, who never
had been in a sugar house and inhaled the warm fumes of boiling
cane juice, night and day, and incidentally submitted to the
discomforts of an open building, not intended for sleeping quarters,
thought that the treatment, as they chose to call it, was a cure for
tuberculosis. My guest found himself quite comfortable, and
remained in our home five months. Nothing more was said about
sugar house treatment. By spring, like a butterfly, he emerged into
the sunlight, strong and well and ready to fly to pastures new, which
he did. We did not even hear from that doctor again. He was a
physician in good practice in Galveston during the war, and told Gen.
Magruder he thought he had met us years before!
Every planter in my day entertained strangers who came and
went, like a dream. Some were grateful for their entertainment, some
did not so much as write “bread and butter” notes, after their
departure.
Queer, inquisitive folks lighted upon us now and then. I recall a
party of Philadelphians who arrived at the adjacent town with a note
of introduction to the president of the bank. They said they wanted to
visit a plantation and see the working thereof. That hospitable
husband of mine happened to be passing; he was called in and
introduced to the party, and he invited them for the whole of the next
day. They came, they saw, I don’t know if they thought they
conquered. We thought so, for they were on a tour of observation.
They were delightfully informal and interesting people. We
accompanied them to the canefield—the negroes happened to be at
work quite near the house—into some of the cabins, the infirmary,
where they were surprised to find not one inmate, into the nursery
where the babies were sleeping in cribs, and the older children
eating mush and molasses. They had to taste the food, had to talk to
the granny about her babies, had to ask after her health. Meeting a
negro man, walking as brisk as anybody, with a hoe over his
shoulder, they had to inquire as to his condition, and must have been
surprised to hear what an awful misery he had in his back. They had
to see where the plantation sewing, and the cooking, were done. I
began to think before it was all over we were superintendents of
some penal institution and were enduring a visit from the committee
of inspection. However, they were very attractive, naïve visitors,
surprised at everything. After luncheon, waited upon by a negro boy
on a broad grin—it was all so very funny to him—they took their
departure, and my husband and I had a merry laugh over the
incidents of the day. It was rather an interesting interlude in our quiet
life, and remoteness from the abolition storm that was hovering over
the land.
All the people I entertained were not queer. We had a house full
always of gay, young people, young girls from the North that were
my schoolmates in New Haven, girls who were my play-mates, and
the friends of my young ladyhood in New Orleans, fresh, bright,
happy girls, who rode horseback, sang and danced and made merry
all through the house. All are gone now. Only the sweet memory of
them comes to me in my solitary day-dreams.
XXVIII
A MONUMENT TO MAMMIES
Let us have a memorial, before the last of us who had a black

mammy passes away. We who still linger would love to see a granite
monument to the memory of the dear mammy who fostered our
childhood. Our grandchildren, indeed our children, will never know
the kind of mammies their ancestors were blessed with.
I know of two only of the old stock of nurses and housekeepers
left. They were grown women when Sherman marched through
Georgia, destroying their old homes, laying waste the land, and
Butler sat down in New Orleans, wreaking vengeance on their
hapless masters, and scattering their little bands of servants to the
four winds. These two mammies I wot of remained with their own
white folks. The Georgia one lived in a family I visited, a faithful old
woman, doing her utmost to fill a gap (and gaps were of constant
occurrence) in any branch of household duty. Mammy was a
supernumerary after the children grew up, but when the new-fangled
housemaid swept her trailing skirts out of the premises, mammy
filled her place till another of that same half-educated sort came.
When cook flared up and refused to do her duty in the way to which
she was called, mammy descended into the deserted kitchen.
One day I overheard the son of that family, who was about to start
to a Northern college, say: “Mammy, put on your Sunday black silk; I
want you to go down the street with me; I am going to have your
picture taken.” “What fur, son?” “I want it with the rest of my family to
put on my bureau at college.” “Lord! son, you ought’en to hav’ my
black face to show to dem Yankees; den you’ll tell ’em I’se your
mammy.” However, the pleased old darky, as black as her Sunday
silk, had her picture taken just like “son” wanted. I have a copy of it
now. God bless her!
A family from the extreme South comes every summer to a quiet
place in Connecticut and brings mammy to take care of the little
ones. I doubt if they feel they could come without her. Mammy is
pure black; no adulterated blood under that skin—black, flat-nosed
and homely, but the children adore her, and she “makes them mind,
too,” she proudly tells you. Every boarder in that big house knows
mammy, but I doubt if one of them knows her name; I do not. It
warms my heart to shake hands with those two remnants of a dear
past civilization, the only two I ever met.
When a child I made frequent visits to my cousin, Judge Chinn’s
plantation, in West Baton Rouge. I believe that hospitable house has
long since vanished into the river, with its store of pleasant
memories. How I always, when I arrived there, had to run find
mammy first thing, and how she folded me in her warm embrace and
delighted my ears with, “How dis chile do grow.” Every visitor at that
grand, hospitable home knew mammy. She always stood back of the
judge’s chair, and with signals directed the young girls how to wait at
table. She managed after the children grew up, married and settled
(some of them settled, Creole fashion, in the home nest too) that
whole big and mixed household, where another generation of babies
came to claim a portion of her love and care. Nobody thought to go
to the judge or his wife for anything. “All applications,” to use an
office phrase, “made to mammy.” She was always ready to point the
way or to help one through it.
Casually meeting Mrs. Chinn and inquiring of the various members
of her family that from long absence I had lost sight of, “And
mammy,” I said. The dear old lady burst into tears. Mammy had died
holding the hand of the sorrowing mistress, her last words, “My work
is done. I tried to do my best,” and God knows she did.
We had a mammy in my mother’s house when I was a wee little
thing, and we children loved her right along all the week till Saturday
night, when the ponderous woman brought the big washtub upstairs
and two pails of hot water. We hated mammy then, for she had a
heavy hand and a searching eye, and a rough wash rag full of
soapsuds. Not a fold in the ear, nor a crease in the plump body
escaped her vigilance. I really think we were glad when we outgrew
need of her assistance at those dreaded Saturday night’s baths, and
she went to other little lambs, in pastures new.
When I went a bride to my husband’s home, Charlotte, his old
mammy, met us and proudly escorted us within doors, where were
fresh flowers and a blazing fire (it was long past midnight, and
dreadfully stormy too), and every comfort prepared and ready for
“the coming of the bride.” I felt then and there mammy would be a
comfort for me and a real help, and so she proved, in all my sunny
life in the plantation home and in the dark days of the war, too. My
Mammy Charlotte had complete charge of everything about the
house. She had been thoroughly trained by my husband’s mother.
She made the jellies and the pickles, the ice cream, the cakes, doing
a little of everything to make our home comfortable and happy. And
often she remarked that no one in the house did more and had less
to show for it at night than she did. That is a truth about many
households, one does all the neglected things, and picks up all the
loose threads. Guests were made to understand if they required
anything, from a riding horse to a fresh stick on the fire, from a mint
julep to a bedroom candle, they had only to call Charlotte. She was
never beyond the reach of a summons, day or night. She was
mammy to all the children of the house, and all the other children
that floated in from other people’s houses. It was Mammy Charlotte
who hurriedly secreted the spoons (!) when a Federal cavalry
company came prancing down the road toward our gates. It was
mammy who ran to my bedside to whisper, “Don’t you get skeered,
they does look like gentlemen;” and after they had taken a drink of
water and trotted off again it was mammy back to say, “It’s all right;
they didn’t say nothin’ ’bout spoons.” Even at that early date and that
remote spot from Butler’s headquarters the matter of spoons had
been so freely and laughingly discussed that the sable crowd of
witnesses that surrounded every household must have taken the
idea that collecting spoons was “the chief end of man.”
I pity the little ones of to-day with no black mammy of their very
own to cuddle them to her warm bosom and comfort them, and tell
them funny rhymes about “The Monkey and the Baboon’s Sister,” to
make them forget their griefs in a merry laugh. The high-falutin’
nurses they have now, here to-day, gone to-morrow, without any
anchorage in our hearts and homes, are not and never could be
made mammies like we of threescore years and ten were blessed
with.
Who of us that lived within a day’s journey of Col. Hicky but
remembers his Milly, the mammy of that grand, big household? The
dear Colonel lived to see great-grandchildren grow up, and Milly
mammied at least three generations at “Hope Estate.” She was a
famous nurse. Mind you, this was decades before trained nurses
arrived on the stage. How many of us remember how tenderly and
untiringly Milly nursed some of our invalids to health! Her services
were tendered, and oh! how gratefully accepted. With a sad heart I
recall a sick baby I nursed until Milly came and put me to bed and
took the ailing child in her tender arms. For two days and nights unto
the end she watched the little flickering spark.
When Mr. Sidell removed his family to Washington after his
election to the United States Senate, I traveled in their company
several days. The children had their colored mammy to care for
them. She had been raised in the Deslonde family, a trusted servant.
I was struck with the system and care with which she managed her
little charges from Mathilde, a girl in her teens, down to baby Johnny.
She lived with them during those troublous times in Washington, she
accompanied the family to Paris, and I presume died there. Always
dressed in a neat calico gown, a fichu and tignon, even in Paris she
did not alter her dress nor wear another headgear than her own
bandana. There’s a mammy to immortalize!
Then let us raise a monument to the mammies of the days that
were. Quickly, too, before the last one of us who were crowned with
such a blessing shall have passed away “’mid the shadows that flee
in the night.”
XXIX
MARY ANN AND MARTHA ANN
The story of Mary Ann and Martha Ann and the red bonnet has
been so often retold to my children and grandchildren that every
detail has been retained, and in its completeness as I give it here, it
is a bit of authentic family history “dressed up” as its hearers love it.
“What kin we do, Ma’y Ann? I dun hear Miss Liza talkin’ ’bout it
agin, and ’lowin’ it got to be found.” The two little negroes sat under a
wide-spreading pecan tree that scattered its shade and its late
autumn nuts over the grassy lawn of a spacious Southern mansion.
They crouched closely together, heads touching, voices whispering
and faces turned to the river road, their scanty linsey skirts drawn
tightly over little black legs, so that no searching eye from the broad
veranda could spy them. Mary Ann looked anxiously around, and,
drawing her knotty, kinky head closer still to Martha’s softer locks,
whispered: “Marm Charlotte gwine to clean out de L, and you know
she’ll go in dat room fust thing.”
Marthy sprang back with dilated eyes.
“Ma’y Ann, it carnt stay dar; it’s gotten to cum outen dar, oh Lordy!
What did you put it dar in the fust place fur?”
“I didn’t put it dar.” Ma’y Ann’s eyes flashed. “You fotch it dar your
own self, unner your apern; you sed it was yourn and Miss Ellen giv
it to you.”
Marthy sprang to her feet. “Miss Ellen never giv me nothin’ in her
whole life.” She shook her clenched fist in Ma’y Ann’s face, then
burst into tears. The stolen conference, like many another that had
preceded it, was opened in a spirit of mutual conciliation, but as the
interview progressed and interest waxed, the poor little negroes
became fierce in their alarm, fast losing sight of the turpitude of the
deed committed in common in the over-mastering anxiety of each
one to shift the entire blame on the other.
“Hush, gal, set down; I hear Marm Charlotte dis bery minit; she
mustn’t kotch me under dis here pecon tree agin. I was down here
yisterday, tryin’ to dig a hole where we’s settin’ now! I want ter berry
de rotten thing. Marm Charlotte kotch’d me here, and she ax’d what I
doin’ and I ’low’d I was gitten pecons fur de turkeys, and she
’sponded she low’d ter tell me when to feed de turkeys.”
Marthy Ann slowly resumed her seat, taking care to get well
behind the pecan tree. She was nervously sobbing, “She’s kept me
—a—lookin’ fur it—till I feared to go in—our—room—feared to find it
—a settin’ on de baid—Oh, Ma’y Ann, what made you take hit?”
Ma’y Ann’s eyes flashed fire. She was of the heroic sort, and by no
wise melted by Marthy’s lamentations and tears.
“I didn’t take hit; you tuck hit, and you know you did; you’s de
biggest rascal on de place. You does a thing, den you goes whinin’
and cryin’ ’bout hit. I does a thing, I jist ’sponds fur hit and sticks hit
out.”
Marthy wiped her eyes on the linsey skirt and tried to imbibe some
of her companion’s courage.
“Well, Ma’y Ann, you put it whar tis and ghostes cum out ev’ry
night and ties me wid de long, red strings.”
“No ghostes cum arter me,” said Ma’y Ann, bridling up. “Dat shows
you put it dar your own self.”
“We ain’t got no time ter talk and fuss; we got ter find a place to
put hit now. God knows it cums atter me ev’y night, and las’ night de
debbel had it on, Ma’y Ann. I seed him; he jist strutted all around de
room wid it on his haid and de ribbons was tied to his horns.”
“Oh, Lordy, Marthy, is he got hit now?” The terrified child sprang to
her feet and gazed distractedly up the tree. “Marthy, we kin fling hit
up in dis tree; won’t de debbil let hit stay in de crotch?”
The strained eyes eagerly searched for a sheltering limb that
would catch and conceal the thing, the ghost of which would not lay,
day or night. Marm Charlotte had never relaxed in her search, in
bureaus, and armchairs, behind hanging dresses, in the big cedar
chest, among the blankets, upon top shelves, in old bandboxes, in
trunks, over bed testers, downstairs in china closets, among plates
and dishes, under parlor sofas and over library bookcases. Ma’y Ann
and Marthy Ann had no rest. They made believe to search the
garden, after the house had been pulled to pieces, going down
among the artichoke bushes and the cherokee rose hedge that
smothered the orchard fence, wishing and praying somebody might
find it in one of those impossible places all torn by squirrels or made
into nests by birds.
Christmas, with its turkeys and capons fattened on pecan nuts, its
dances and flirtations in the wide halls of the big house, its weddings
and breakdowns in the negro quarters, had come and gone. The
whirr of the ponderous mill had ceased; the towering chimney of the
sugar house no longer waved its plume of smoke by day nor
scattered its showers of sparks by night. Busy spiders spun nets
over big, dusty kettles, and hung filmy veils from the tall rafters.
Keen-eyed mice scampered over the floors and scuffled in the walls
of the deserted building whence the last hogshead of sugar and
barrel of molasses had been removed, and the key turned in the
great door of the sugar house. Tiny spears of cane were sprouting
up all over the newly plowed fields. Drain and ditches were bubbling
over, and young crawfish darting back and forth in their sparkling
waters. The balmy air of early summer, freighted with odors of
honeysuckle and cape jessamine, and melodious with the whistle
and trill of mocking birds, floated into the open windows and doors of
the plantation dwelling. The shadowy crepe myrtle tree scattered
crimpy pink blossoms over the lawn. Lady Banks rose vines
festooned the trellises and scrambled in wild confusion over the roof
of the well house, waving its golden radiance in the soft, sunny air.
Cherokee and Chickasaw hedges, with prodigal luxuriance, covered
the rough wooden fences, holding multitudes of pink and white
blossoms in thorny embrace, and sheltering the secret nests of
roaming turkey hens and their wild-eyed broods.
“Well, Levi, you’se dun your job, and it wus a big one, too.”
“Yes, William, I whitewashed as much as ten miles o’ fencing, and
all de trees in de stable lot, besides de cabins and de chicken
houses.”
“Ten miles o’ fencing,” replied William doubtfully. “I didn’t ’low dere
wuz dat much on de whole plantation. Why, dey call hit ten miles
from here to Manchac, and ’bout ten from here to Cohite.”
“I mean ten miles in and out; about five miles one side de fence
and five miles de odder.”
“Oh! that-a-way,” said William dubiously. “Charlotte, give Mr.
Stucker another dodger.”
The speakers were two negro men, one in the shirt sleeves and
long apron that betokened the household cook, the other in the
shiny, shabby “store clothes” of the town darky. They sat at the
kitchen table, in front of a window commanding a view of newly
whitewashed fences and trees. Etiquette required that William
should play the rôle of host, on this, the last morning of the
whitewasher’s stay. Charlotte had laid the cloth and placed the
plates and knives for two, and served the fried bacon and hot corn
dodgers to Mr. Levi Stucker, a free man, who had a house of his own
and a wife to wait on him and in view of this dignity and state was
deemed entitled to unusual consideration.
“Lemme ask you, Charlotte,” said Stucker, carefully splitting his
dodger, and sopping the hot crumbs in the bacon gravy, “is you
missed ary thing outen de yard on dese premises? Caze I heard
dem two little gals havin’ a big talk in dat room next to me last night;
you knows dat’s a mighty weaky boardin’ ’tween dose rooms and a
pusson don’t have to listen to hear. I bin hearin’ ’em movin’ ’bout and
a whisperin’ most ginerally every night when dey ought most likely to
be asleep. Las’ night a old owl was a squinchin’ on dat mulberry tree
by de winder, and de shutter hit slammed. Dat woke dem gals up; it
was atter midnight; dey was skeert, one on ’em begin to blubber and
sed de debbil was dar to kotch ’em. From de way dey talked—(but it
was mystifyin’, I tell you)—I ’lowed in my mind dem gals had stole
somethin’, I couldn’t gather what, fur dey didn’t name no specials,
but sure’s you born dey’s up to somethin’, and skeered to death
’bout its bein’ foun’ out.”
Charlotte stopped on her way to the frying pan with widening eyes
and uplifted fork, and listened attentively, with an occasional jerk of
the head toward William.
“Jist tell me,” pursued Levi, “if you ’low dose gals to have de run of
de quarters, caze dey gits mischief in dere heads if dey run wid
quarter niggers.”
“No, sir,” responded the woman emphatically, “dey never goes
down dar; I’m keerful ’bout dat—onreason’ble keerful; no, sir, if I was
to let ’em have the run o’ dat quarter lot dere would never be a cold
biskit nor a cup o’ clabber in dis house de minit atter you put ’em
outen your hands. No, sir, Mr. Stucker, if old Hannah, or ary of de
sick niggers down dar wants anything from dis house dey got to
send one of their own little niggers wid de cup or de pan, and I
pintedly gives ’em what’s needed; dere’s nuff work for Ma’y Ann and
Marthy Ann ’bout dis house ’dout dey visitin’ at de quarters and
waitin’ on quarter niggers. I bet, dough, dey’s bin in some mischief I
ain’t had time to ferret out.”
After a pause she continued, “And you say you think dey done
stole somethin’?”
“Yes,” answered Stucker, pushing back his chair and rising from
the table; “yes, I understand somethin’ of dat natur’, if you has
missed ary thing.”
“We did miss dat currycomb what William comb his har wid; it was
a bran new, kinder stiff one, and he missed it last Sunday,” replied
Charlotte.
“Dat jist fallen outen de winder, it warn’t lost,” interrupted William,
who had been watching for a favorable opportunity to join the
conversation.
“Yes, dem spawns foun’ hit outdoors, when I tole ’em I’d skin ’em if
it wasn’t perjuced,” said Charlotte, turning to William, who thereupon
relapsed into acquiescent silence.
“It warn’t no currycomb dey was talkin’ ’bout last night,” said
Stucker, jerking first one leg then the other to free his shaggy
breeches of dodger crumbs.
“Jist hold on a minit,” said Charlotte, stepping to the kitchen door
and shouting, “Ma’y Ann and Marthy Ann, whar’s you?”
“Here I is, ma’am, I’s comin’, yes ’em,” was responded from an
upper porch, and the two little darkies scuffled down the back stairs.
“Jist you two run down to de orchard whar I kin see you all de
time, hear me? All de time, and look fur dat Dominiker hen’s nest. I
hear her cacklin’ down dar, and don’t neither of you dar’ cum back till
you find it. If you cum back ’fore I call you, I’ll pickle you well. Run!”
Two little guinea blue cotton skirts whisked through a gap in the
rose hedge and emerged in the deep grass of the orchard, before
Charlotte turned back into the kitchen, satisfied they were at a
distance, and still under her observation. Levi Stucker meanwhile,
having carefully tied his two weeks’ earnings in the corner of his red
cotton handkerchief, and shared his last “chaw” of tobacco with
William, swung his bundle from the end of his long whitewash pole
and departed, with the shambling, shuffling gait of the typical
Southern negro.
“I’m gwine upstairs, William, and I’ll ramshackle dat room till I find
out what’s dar,” said the woman. She slowly mounted the stairs,
down which the two culprits had so lately descended with flying feet,
and turned into a small room on the servants’ gallery. She glanced
around the bare apartment the two little negroes called their own.
There was a battered trunk against the wall with a damaged cover
and no fastening of any kind, a rickety chair and a bed. Charlotte
tore the linsey dresses, homespun petticoats and check aprons from
nails behind the door, shaking and critically examining each article.
In the trunk she found remnants of rag dolls and broken toys and bits
of quilt pieces that had been their playthings for time out of mind.
There were no pockets to examine, no locks to pry open. “Dey don’t
need no pockets to carry dere money in, and no locked up trunks fur
dere jewelry,” Charlotte always said. It was her habit to go in and out
their room freely, to see that it was kept in some kind of order and
the bed regularly made up. The door of the room was always open,
and no means afforded for securing it on the inside. Notwithstanding
these precautions of Charlotte, who practically accepted the doctrine
of infant depravity, there was a mystery concealed in that room that
at intervals almost throttled the two little negroes, and, strange to
say, with all the woman’s vigilance, had slumbered months within
sound of her voice. She rapidly threw the clothes on the window sill,
turned the trunk inside out and pushed its battered frame into the
middle of the floor.
Nothing now remained to be searched but the plain unpainted bed.
It was neatly made up, the coarse brown blankets securely tucked in
all around. Charlotte whisked that off and dragged after it the cotton
mattress which rested on a “sack bottom,” secured by interlacing
cords to the bed frame. There was revealed the hidden secret!
Crushed quite flat and sticking to the sacking, long under pressure of
the cotton mattress and the tossing and tumbling children, what trick
of dainty beauty lay before her? It was so crumpled and smothered,
torn and ragged, soiled with fleeces of cotton lint that had sifted
through the bed seams, and covered with dust and grime that but for
glimpses of its original form and color here and there it would never
have been recognized. Charlotte snatched it out and fled to the
porch to see if Ma’y Ann and Marthy Ann were still down in the
orchard. There they lay, prone in the soft grass, happy as only
children, and black ones at that, can be. Four little ebony legs kicked
up in the air, and the sound of merry shouts reached Charlotte’s ear.
“You’ll fly dem laigs to sum purpose yit, fur I lay I’ll git Marse Jim to
giv you a breakdown dat’ll make dem laigs tired,” she said to herself.
“You jist lay dar,” she muttered, as she descended the steps. “You
needn’t waste your time (it’s a awful short one) lookin’ for aigs dat de
ole Dominiker ain’t never laid yit.”
The deep window of the library was wide open, the sash thrown up
and an easy lounging chair drawn to the veranda, on which reposed
the towering form of the planter, lazily smoking a cigar, and looking
off upon the broad, swift river at a passing steamboat, floating so
high on its swelling waves that its deck was almost on a line with the
top of the grass-covered levee. Its passengers, thronging the
“guards” in the fragrance of a fine morning, seemed almost near
enough to the spectator on shore to respond to a friendly nod of the
head. The delicate lady of the mansion sat silently within, also
watching the passing boat.
“I see some one waving a paper from the Belle Creole. I believe
that’s Green. Yes, he has tied a handkerchief to his crutch, and is
waving that.”
The planter rose as he spoke and stood for a moment for a better
view. “Here, give me something, quick, to wave back at him.”
At this critical moment Charlotte appeared on the scene. “This will
do,” he exclaimed, catching the velvet wreck from the astonished
woman’s grasp and tossing it aloft, holding it by the long strings.
“Lord! jist see Marse Jim wid dat bonnet I dun foun’, dat you lost
’fore grinding time, Miss Liza, and whar you spec it was? Right onder
Ma’y Ann’s bed.”
“My bonnet! for pity’s sake, only look at it. Look!”
“It don’t look much like a bonnet. It’s more like a red rag to make
the turkeys gobble,” replied the master, disdainfully, throwing it to
Charlotte.
“My bonnet I paid Olympe twenty dollars for, and never wore it but
once; see the satin strings! And just look at the cape at the back!
And the feather poppies!”
Charlotte straightened herself up, holding the crumpled bonnet
and turning it around to show its proportions. It was of the
“skyscraper” shape, made on stiff millinette, that is more easily
broken than bent. Mashed sideways, it showed in its flattened state
as much of the satin lining as of velvet cover.

Meaning Making in The Contemporary Congregational Song Genre 1St Ed Edition Daniel Thornton Full Chapter

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Meaning Making in The Contemporary Congregational Song Genre 1St Ed Edition Daniel Thornton Full Chapter

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Meaning-Making in the Contemporary

Congregational Song Genre 1st ed.

ISBN 978-3-030-55608-2 ISBN 978-3-030-55609-9 (eBook)

Serious academic studies of contemporary congregational music have been

Sydney, Australia Mark Evans

I firstly want to thank my publishing family at Palgrave Macmillan. It has

My PhD supervisor and ongoing academic mentor is Mark Evans.

More importantly, as a fellow Godly creative, he has shown me the beauti-

1 Contemporary Congregational Songs Genre Formation

2 Contemporary Congregational Songs 27

3 The Contemporary Congregational Song Industry

Authenticity, Originality, and the Singer-Songwriter 43

4 So the Songwriters Say (Poietic Analysis Pt 2) 57

5 The Old and New Guard: Ways of Thinking for

6 How Christians Feel About the Songs They Sing:

7 How Christians Feel About the Songs They Sing:

8 Just Another Pop Song? The Music (Trace Analysis Pt 1)121

9 Just Another Pop Song? The Lyrics (Trace Analysis Pt 2)145

10 Some Individual Examples: Australia (Trace Analysis Pt 3)171

11 Some Individual Examples: UK and USA (Trace

12 The Current and Future Contemporary Congregational

Contemporary Congregational Songs Genre

© The Author(s) 2021 1

Key Questions and Findings

roots lie. However, the definition of contemporary congregational songs

Second, the specific context (e.g., a local church) or location (e.g., a

The Formation of a Genre

Perspectives on CCS History

worshipping and evangelising. I certainly acknowledge that that was not

upon, theoretical positions related to CCS and their communities.

The meaning of music resides in people, not in sounds. In a general sense,

In this way, Corbitt reiterates the ideas of his sociomusicological con-

potentially overwhelming configurations in examining music consump-

The relevance of this to CCS is particularly in the analysis of Christians’

• Music orders and organises time

Arts/Media Reading/ Bricolage

Why Music Semiology? (Texts, Writers, Audience)

understanding of the genre within the limitations discussed? It is to this

intended or the texts imply, music is meaningful because it is meaningful

sense, such an approach is not radical. The music sociologist, Longhurst,

musical semiotics is a doubly cryptic activity. Its practitioners can be seen as

Semiotics is challenging enough without the added complexity and

Because it is a metalanguage, musical analysis cannot substitute for the lived

The CCS genre is so profoundly praxis-oriented and experiential, the

CCS production. Additionally, song story videos, where publicly available,

YouTube: The Primary Text

to the audience, music videos need to be studied primarily in relation to

Price, D. E. 1999. Higher Ground. Billboard.

Contemporary Congregational Songs

© The Author(s) 2021 27

worship music”, without correspondingly acknowledging that “worship”

Praise and Worship Theology

Contemporary for Whom?

I imagine all of us have read “People I Have Smiled With,” or,

Let us have a memorial, before the last of us who had a black

You might also like

Sydney, Australia Mark Evans

1 Contemporary Congregational Songs Genre Formation

2 Contemporary Congregational Songs 27

3 The Contemporary Congregational Song Industry

Authenticity, Originality, and the Singer-Songwriter 43

4 So the Songwriters Say (Poietic Analysis Pt 2) 57

5 The Old and New Guard: Ways of Thinking for

6 How Christians Feel About the Songs They Sing:

7 How Christians Feel About the Songs They Sing:

8 Just Another Pop Song? The Music (Trace Analysis Pt 1)121

9 Just Another Pop Song? The Lyrics (Trace Analysis Pt 2)145

10 Some Individual Examples: Australia (Trace Analysis Pt 3)171

11 Some Individual Examples: UK and USA (Trace

12 The Current and Future Contemporary Congregational