Navigating Cultural Difference in Gospel Music Study and Performance

The meanings and values that people assign to music and the material culture that music creation offers make excellent data sources for uncovering new and transformative aspects of culture. Gospel music is a subculture that emphasizes a unique performance style, and is based upon culturally specific religious, social, musical, and historical contexts. Students in the ensemble who musically developed through a Western classical-based connective strand may experience some adjustment from what they know and develop new skills to navigate across cultural difference. The purpose of this study was to document how participants in a specific university gospel choir setting navigated across cultural differences for gospel choir study and performance. Participants were recruited and interviewed a total of three times about their experience in the ensemble. Questions that guided the study focused on three areas: religious difference, social difference, and musical difference. An in-case analysis of each participant showed that overall, experiences in the choir were positive. Participants from a variety of diverse backgrounds approached new cultural learning differences such as physical movement, aural music learning, religious text, and performance context with an open mind and an individualized way of navigating through difference. In order for participants to reach a point where they felt that they had cultural competency in a new musical area, in this case, the establishment of a strong community was especially essential because of the assumptions attached to this ensemble and because of many of the participants' initial limited understanding of cultural markers for learning music that draw on improvisatory and aural means. This study implies that there are connections between each cultural difference that are related. For the educator intending to introduce new cultural competencies in their classrooms, considering the dynamics in which cultural differences might interact with each other is essential.