African American Sacred Music in Catholic Worship
By Kevin P. Johnson D.M.A.
(Article: Page 5 of 8)
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Authentically Black and Catholic (Universal) Music

The goal for the musician in an African American Catholic Church must be to create a musically balanced worship environment that is authentically Black and authentically Catholic. As Clarence Rivers posits in Soulfull Worship, Musically liberated Catholics – like our forefathers who combine African and white protestant music to help produce the rich musics of black America – must be free to use traditional Catholic musics, and allow them free interplay with our Afro-American musics. The results will be a still greater enrichment of the Afro-American styles, further originality. The Afro-American tradition in music is a tradition of freedom and creativity. There are not, therefore, any absolute limits on what is “black”, as long as black men themselves freely choose it because they find it to be of value.¹⁴

Today we find a church where rap music is considered the preference of the young hip-hop generation of church goers, gospel music the preference of old school Christians, and the hymns of the church and negro spirituals the choice of the church elders. As Black Catholics, some of us still prefer the European Catholic model of worship to the African American model. With this in mind, the musician must have a commitment to creating a universal music not limited by categories or stylistic shortsightedness. “Be careful, therefore, not to imagine that blackness should be stereotyped into any given mold or definition. Such rigid dogmatism is more akin to European Scholasticism than it is to Afro-American tradition.”¹⁵

The African American musical experience in Catholic worship consists of a synthesizing of traditional music of Mother Africa often utilizing drums and African texts, Euro American hymns, negro spirituals, a variety of gospel music, jazz, pop, rap music and European Catholic music. This universal palette of musical experiences is consistent with the universal church. This explains the broad appeal of the African American Catholic worship experience. Rivers writes: “The fullest freedom for Black Catholics, musically speaking, will come not merely after we have learned what there is to learn from our black musical heritage, but only after we have come to imagine our yet unrealized musical possibilities. To cease to dream and to create is to become enslaved.¹⁶

Musical Composition

The evolution of African American Catholic worship will greatly depend on Black Catholic musicians" ability to compose quality music for the church. The Catholic Church has always encouraged composers, who are led by the Spirit of God, to compose music for the church. Vatican II documents indicate:

Composers, animated by the Christian spirit, should accept that it pertains to their vocation to cultivate sacred music and increase its stores of treasures. Let them produce compositions which have the qualities proper to the genuine sacred music, and which can be sung not only by large choirs but also by smaller choirs, and which make possible the active participation of the whole congregation. The texts intended to be sung must always be in conformity with Catholic doctrine. Indeed, they should be drawn chiefly from the sacred scripture and from liturgical sources.¹⁷

The progress made by black composers of Catholic church music in the last half of the twentieth-century will not be enough to sustain the African American Catholic worshipping community in the twenty-first century. The Lead Me Guide Me Hymnal is a wonderful resource but it does not contain compositions written after the late 1980"s. It provides superb documentation of the beginnings of the African American Catholic musical landscape, just as the African American Hymnal has done with Protestant Church music. We as African American Catholics must define our role in the American Catholic Church and in the lives of the hip-hop generation. New music must continue to be disseminated in black Catholic churches throughout America for this music will continue to refine and define the manner in which worship is offered in the church. Failure to do so will cause musicians in the Black Catholic Church to overuse the music in hymnals such as Lead Me Guide Me, or result in the inappropriate use of popular gospel music in the mass, or an environment of worship that is staid and outdated. Black Catholics have not built up the stores of musical repertoire that define its worship as have many dominant cultures and religions in the world. Despite the ability of the black musician in the Catholic church to draw from a variety of musical sources, music composed by and for African American Catholics can more completely capture the manner which its seeks to worship in song.

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