Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"The most extensive ethnographic study to date of Pentecostal music practices. The author's perspective as a practicing believer and respected ethnomusicologist provides unprecedented access to the community and a deep understanding of Pentecostal traditions and discourses."--Judah Cohen, author of
Jewish Liturgical Music in Nineteenth-Century America "Island Gospel is a groundbreaking exploration into the complex landscape of Jamaican Pentecostal musical culture. By working in rural and urban religious communities in Jamaica, as well as Jamaican diasporic communities in New York, Melvin Butler unearths the ways in which the faithful hold onto a 'surprisingly resilient' holy-worldly binary as they construct, deconstruct, and collapse boundaries within Pentecostal musical culture across ideas of traditional and modern; colonialism and independence; Jamaican-ness and American-ness; local and global; racialized sounds of Blackness and whiteness; and generations. Throughout his fieldwork, Butler benefits from and remains refreshingly self-reflexive about his position as an ethnomusicologist, 'believer,' and accomplished keyboardist participating in and observing church life. A must-read for scholars of Caribbean musical culture and Pentecostalism."--Judith Casselberry, author of The Labor of Faith: Gender and Power in Black Apostolic Pentecostalism
