Southern gospel is sometimes called "quartet music" by fans because of the originally all-male, tenor-lead-baritone-bass quartet makeup. Examples of convention songs include "Heavenly Parade," "I'm Living In Canaan Now," " Give the World a Smile," and "Heaven's Jubilee."
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Convention songs were employed by training centers like the Stamps-Baxter School Of Music as a way to teach quartet members how to concentrate on singing their own part. These songs are called "convention songs" because various conventions were organized across the United States for the purpose of getting together regularly and singing songs in this style. In the contrapuntal sections, each group member has a unique lyric and rhythm. In the homophonic sections, the four parts sing the same words and rhythms. Ĭonvention songs typically have contrasting homophonic and contrapuntal sections. Because it grew out of the musical traditions of white musicians from the American South, the name Southern gospel was used to differentiate it from so-called black gospel. Over time, southern gospel came to be an eclectic musical form with groups singing traditional hymns, a capella (jazz-style singing with no instruments) songs, country, bluegrass, spirituals, and "convention songs". Showalter Company (1879) and the Stamps-Baxter Music and Printing Company. Southern gospel was promoted by traveling singing school teachers, quartets, and shape note music publishing companies such as the A. Some of the genre's roots can be found in the publishing work and "normal schools" or singing schools of Aldine S. The existence of the genre prior to 1910 is evident in the work of Charles Davis Tillman (1861–1943), who popularized "The Old Time Religion", wrote "Life's Railway to Heaven" and published 22 songbooks. Nonetheless, the style of the music itself had existed for at least 35 years prior-although the traditional wisdom that southern gospel was "invented" in the 1870s by circuit preacher Everett Beverly is spurious. Vaughan Music Publishing Company in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee.
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The date of southern gospel's establishment as a distinct genre is generally considered to be 1910, the year the first professional quartet was formed for the purpose of selling songbooks for the James D.