Gospel: America's Art and Soul

American Visions, Dec, 1998 by Abby Ellis

In the sanctuary of a historic Denver church, author-performer-professor Horace Clarence Boyer is seated at the piano, his hands poised above the keys, his eyes searching the faces of the row of singers standing before him. "Listen to the rhythm," he advises. "Don't look at the sheet music. No matter how `happy' you get, stay on the music. I must have every voice singing at this point ... a good, solid tone."

Boyer is the man who comes to town not to preach the gospel, but to teach its songs to anyone with a voice and a desire to sing what he considers the most arresting music of the past century. It's all part of an annual weekend workshop celebrating the African-American sacred singing tradition through singing Negro spirituals, "appropriated" 19th-century white gospel hymns, and musical selections drawn from popular African-American church hymnals.

Most significantly for Boyer, the weekend is an opportunity for him to reach people and to teach them how to approach music that is outside their cultural experience. "Ninety percent of my work in this music is done with nonblack people," he says, "and what I'm attempting to do is show them that it's allright to study this music and to participate in it, but that they must do it with a little authenticity. Sometimes, to help them do that, I advise them to check their own particular cultures at the door."

An acclaimed scholar in the field of African-American gospel music, Boyer is a professor of music theory and African-American studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he puts his theory into practice. "I reach for a mix of cultures," he says. "It's quite a stretch for white students from New England to sing Southern black gospel. I've also run across, some black students who couldn't sing. The basic requirement they must bring to this experience is vocal ability. I deal as much with the culture as I do with the mechanics of the music, because if people don't know why and how they're doing something, it's never going to sound right."

A native of Winter Park, Fla., Boyer and his brother, James, grew up in the 1940s and `50s in a rich religious environment in which their spiritual health was continually nurtured by their parents, both religious leaders in the Church of God in Christ. "My parents were both ministers in the Pentecostal and sanctified church," he says, "so we were born into it and became involved in its music almost immediately. My brother took up the piano when he was 4. By the time he was 11, he was playing for the church choir, and I, who was in the third grade, began singing with the children's choir."

A couple of years later, the boys left Winter Park for Panama City, Fla., and James studied gospel piano with an aunt who played not only church music but also sanctified music. Upon returning home, they began performing in local churches what they had learned. "These weren't the hymns from the Baptist and Methodist churches," Boyer recalls. "These were the jubilant `shout songs' --gospels and ballads.

The Boyer Brothers gradually earned a reputation distinguished enough to lead to recording opportunities. Throughout their high-school years, they performed spiritual and gospel tunes, which Boyer describes as "songs either created on the spur of the moment or cataloged in memories for the purpose of pulling out spontaneously." To put themselves through Bethune-Cookman College, the brothers began performing at various churches in the Daytona Beach, Fla., area. Consequently, Horace, who had had plans of becoming a teacher, decided to major in music instead--much to his family's chagrin.

"They thought I'd backslid, because clearly I was going to be learning music that was not for the Lord," Boyer explains. "If you were in church, where everybody already does music, it was not acceptable to major in music. Thankfully, I had sense enough to know that when I came home from college, I had to act as if it hadn't ruined me. I had to draw a line between the two places. At home, we still played our music by rote, so I didn't refer to any notes or try to change things in any way."

Countering any and all objections to his pursuing a formal education in music, Boyer earned his college diploma from Bethune-Cookman and his graduate degree from the Eastman School of Music before embarking on a multifaceted career that included a stint as guest curator for the Smithsonian Institution and as a United Negro College Fund Distinguished Scholar-at-Large at Fisk University.

In the 1960s, during his years of academic growth and self-discovery, Boyer noticed the substance and sound of gospel as he knew it undergoing subtle but dramatic changes that have ultimately taken it out of the church and "' brought it into the popular domain. "When I came into gospel, I was really c seeing it as a testimony to my beliefs, a way of testing the spirits. I was trying to be as close to God as possible," he explains.

"It was an extension of the church service. When I was a teenager and a young man, that's what concerts were all about. Now, when I go to gospel music concerts, I find that element totally missing. I believe we've reached a point where there is a kind of concert gospel that would never have been sung in church because it has borrowed so much from the secular world."