A City Called Heaven: Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780252080692)

In A City Called Heaven, Robert M. Marovich follows gospel music from early hymns and camp meetings through its growth into the sanctified soundtrack of the city's mainline black Protestant churches. Marovich mines print media, ephemera, and hours of interviews with artists, ministers, and historians--as well as relatives and friends of gospel pioneers--to recover forgotten singers, musicians, songwriters, and industry leaders. He also examines the entrepreneurial spirit that fueled gospel music's rise to popularity and granted social mobility to a number of its practitioners. As Marovich shows, the music expressed a yearning for freedom from earthly pains, racial prejudice, and life's hardships. Yet it also helped give voice to a people--and lift a nation.

A City Called Heaven celebrates a sound too mighty and too joyous for even church walls to hold.

Author: Robert M. Marovich
ISBN-10: 0252080696
ISBN-13: 9780252080692
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Language: English
Published: 03/03/2015
Pages: 488
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.70lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.10w x 1.30d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 04/01/2015 pg. 95
Choice 09/01/2015

About the Author
Robert M. Marovich hosts "Gospel Memories" on Chicago's WLUW 88.7 FM and is founder and editor-in-chief of The Journal of Gospel Music, www.journalofgospelmusic.com.