Healing for the Soul

This book uses one of the most important features of the black gospel song-a repetitive musical cycle known as the vamp-to illuminate this tradition's powerful combination of sound and belief. Combining resources from music studies, religious studies, and cultural studies, the book shows how the immediacy of musical sound brings black Christians into meaningful contact with the invisible subjects of their beliefs. The deeply embodied ways believers engage gospel music, then, evidence the transcendent work gospel songs are used to do.