Each of these involved five separate skills: selection of content arrangement language memory delivery.” (3). Kamm goes on to describe this phenomenon “There were basically three branches of oratory: the display of one’s art, often in the form of a panegyric or invective (the latter had its counterpart in the medieval Scottish flyting) the persuasion of an audience to a point of view and the defense or prosecution of a defendant in a court of law. “Rhetoric as a subject as well as an art originated in Sicily in the fifth century BC, and was developed in Athens and in Asia Minor, before becoming an accepted study in Rome.” (1). But these preachers were themselves drawing on a far older tradition.

The origins of rap go back to the black (and some white?) preachers of the 19th. I will also be considering a particular theme which gets tangled up with the well-known ‘Dry Bones In The Valley’, much-recorded in the pre-war era by black preachers and quartets alike. Bates’.Īlthough intended as a larger work (possibly a book) I will here, be concentrating mainly on the origins of rap together with some early background to the importance of the preacher in early black communities especially from the blues and gospel vantage point. Blind Lemon of course commenced his recording career at the end of 1925 with two gospel songs as ‘Deacon L.

I shall be covering this aspect a little later on – albeit briefly. I have chosen a line as my title from the seminal blues singer from East Texas, Blind Lemon Jefferson (c.1893-1929) because I see black gospel as the flipside of the blues coin which featured pre-war blues – along with other blues historians. Gates (DOCD-5414, 5432, 5433, 5442, 5449, 5457, 5469, 5483, 5484) and various others in Document’s awesome reissue programme including individual preachers on their own CD, they amount to practically all the sources we have on this genre. Together with the notes to the 7-CD series Preachers And Congregations (DOCD-5529, 5530, 5547, 5548, 5559, 5560, 5567), nine volumes of the Rev. The contributions in Saints & Sinners edited by Robert Sacre (1996) and the essential Songsters & Saints by Paul Oliver (1984) are the most important exceptions. This article is an initial ‘testing the water’ on a subject in earlier African American song which has rarely been considered in print up to this point in time – the preacher in the late 19th. (a brief survey of black preachers in the South-before 1940)

Essays – Gon’ Act Like a Preacher, Ride From Town to TownĮssays & Articles “Gon’ Act Like A Preacher, Ride From Town to Town”* (*= Matchbox Blues, Blind Lemon Jefferson,1927).

Essays – Blues Jumped A Hyrax Where The Vulture Builds It’s Nest.

Essays – Secularisation & The Evolution of 20th Century Popular Music.

Songsters and Saints by Paul Oliver