Department of Music

Abstract:

Many conservative black churches have often been the sites of unspoken tension with regard to sex. To challenge the church’s dilemma of sexual repression, contemporary gospel artists are releasing love albums. Although scholars have briefly discussed how early gospel artists, like Rosetta Tharpe, transgressed conservative notions of sexual respectability, less attention has been devoted to the ways in which gospel artists engage sex through their music in the contemporary moment. I examine three gospel artists who have created love albums—Bishop T.D. Jakes, Kim Burrell, and Fred Hammond—to demonstrate how various artists use their music and the discourses surrounding it to reconcile sexual desire and spirituality. I define “real spirituality” as an earnest concern for God’s will to be fulfilled on earth. Using the Song of Solomon from the Hebrew Bible as biblical justification, gospel artists assert that the reconciliation of desire and spirituality is the divine will of God. I argue that gospel artists use various musical semiotic encodings as strategies to signify and construct desire. Moreover, I discuss how their reconciliation of sex and spirituality also function as acts of theological defiance—such acts of defiance critique hyper-conservative theological traditions that they believe marginalize sex and aid them in constructing new subjectivities. I also engage in critical analyses of online and televised interviews and examine the entire construct of the love album—including lyrics, melodic and vocal nuances, images, and liner notes. Theses analyses will show how gospel artists are challenging traditional interpretations about God and expanding conventional theological understandings about the relationship between sex and spirituality. I reveal how these artists use their transparency about sex as methods of evangelism and as strategies to strengthen the institution of marriage.

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