New York school offers gospel music degree

A new program at Nyack College in New York City is the first ever to teach gospel music performance.

Gospel music, traditional devotional hymns developed by African slaves, combines Christian songs with African rhythms. It has influenced jazz, and through it R&B.

But Elizabeth Swanson, the new program’s director, says that when it comes to academia, the genre suffers compared to other types of music. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, it’s the only major genre that has no academic journal dedicated to it, and, until now, no university offered a professional degree in gospel music performance.

Establishing the program has encountered some of the typical prejudice by music theorists regarding the style’s purely musical merits.

“I think for a long time gospel music has been viewed as a hobby,” Willana Mack, who sang in the 2008 Oscar-winning movie “August Rush” and is now preparing to launch Nyack’s pioneer program, told the Washington Post.

“Gospel music has not really been looked at as something you can study, a skill that you can learn, but it’s an overall cultural problem that we don’t start requiring that our gospel artists be more versed in music — in the music language, in the music culture, in reading music, in understanding music theory,” Mack added.

The new major in gospel attempts to change these biases. While gospel is traditionally sung in black churches, the students in Nyack’s Manhattan campus include students from the Hispanic and Korean communities of New York.

Many of them tap into their own backgrounds – often in underprivileged homes – when they study for their performance major.

“There’s something genuine about gospel music,” said Mack. “It brings us all back home. …This [degree] cannot be just an academic program. You have to enter into it with a sense of calling.”