Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"In this groundbreaking and insightful book, Melvin Butler takes his readers on a journey into the sound worlds and ritual practices of Jamaican Pentecostal communities." --
New West Indian Guide"In a field dominated by studies of secular popular music, more focus on sacred traditions is overdue and welcomed. We owe great thanks to Michael Butler for bringing us inside these Jamaican and Brooklyn churches to share the songs and stories of a community of worshipers who practice the complex interweaving of belief, ritual, and musical praxis." --
Gotham Center for New York City History"
Island Gospel is a much-needed and important contribution to Pentecostal studies and ethnomusicology. . . . The book offers insights that will be useful to scholars and students across a wide range of fields and disciplines. " --
Journal of Folklore Research"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
