Christian Congregational Music: Performance, Identity and Experience

Christian Congregational Music explores the role of congregational music in Christian religious experience, examining how musicians and worshippers perform, identify with and experience belief through musical praxis. Contributors from a broad range of fields, including music studies, theology, literature, and cultural anthropology, present interdisciplinary perspectives on a variety of congregational musical styles - from African American gospel music, to evangelical praise and worship music, to Mennonite hymnody - within contemporary Europe and North America. In addressing the themes of performance, identity and experience, the volume explores several topics of interest to a broader humanities and social sciences readership, including the influence of globalization and mass mediation on congregational music style and performance; the use of congregational music to shape multifaceted identities; the role of mass mediated congregational music in shaping transnational communities; and the function of music in embodying and imparting religious belief and knowledge. In demonstrating the complex relationship between 'traditional' and 'contemporary' sounds and local and global identifications within the practice of congregational music, the plurality of approaches represented in this book, as well as the range of musical repertoires explored, aims to serve as a model for future congregational music scholarship.

Monique Ingalls is postdoctoral fellow and affiliated lecturer in popular music at the University of Cambridge. Interested broadly in the intersections of music, media and religion, her recent publications explore the role of contemporary evangelical Christian worship music in pilgrimage, public demonstrations and online devotional practices in North America and the United Kingdom. She is co-organizer of the ’Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives’ conference and is also working on an edited volume on music in global pentecostalism. Carolyn Landau is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Music at King’s College London, her current research focusing on the role of music for diverse Muslim communities in London. Her recent publications explore music and Islam, identity, migration, media and community archiving, with a geographical focus on Moroccans in Britain. She is also a member of the Music and Religion Working Group on the Mellon Initiative, Religion Across the Disciplines, at the University of Notre Dame. Tom Wagner is currently is PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at Royal Holloway, University of London. His dissertation explores the relationship between worship music, marketing and transcendence in consumer cultures. His work on this subject has recently appeared as an article in the Australian Journal of Communication co-authored with Tanya Riches, and as a chapter in the forthcoming Ashgate volume, Religions as Brands: New Perspectives on the Marketization of Religion and Spirituality.