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Gospel music is a wonder of the world, a blend of authentic Spirit-filled praise, artistic greatness and sheer musical emotion. A product of the horror of trans-Atlantic slavery, gospel music is inseparable from the Christian gospel, both being stories of hope and beauty stemming from suffering and abuse. Meanwhile gospel music lies at the core of all African-American music and has thereby reached every cultural corner of the world, secular as well as sacred.

In A Brief History of Gospel Music, Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir tells this story in twelve songs, interspersed by brief texts prepared for the occasion under the guidance of Robert Marovich. Beginning with the sounds of West Africa and their synthesis into antebellum Spirituals, the evening’s programme consists of archetypes of the genre’s evolution – from the Jubilee era from 1870, the jazz/blues fusion from 1930, the “Golden Age” of 1940-1960, the civil rights and soul era from 1960, the popular era from 1980 and the urban era from 2000.