Root Recommends: 'Rejoice and Shout'

Clergy members of every religious stripe may debate the existence of God until the cows come home. But as demonstrated by “Rejoice and Shout,” Don McGlynn’s documentary history of African-American gospel music, reasonable arguments are nothing compared with the power of voices lifted in song to invoke the Holy Spirit. Your religion or lack of one doesn’t matter. At some point while watching the film, you may feel that music is God, or if not, a close approximation of divinity.

Featuring interviews from some of gospel music's giants, Don McGlynn's Rejoice & Shout chronicles the journey of gospel from the church to pop radio and back again. The documentary film explores the historical significance of gospel music and the intimate and deep-rooted relationship between the genre and African-American culture.

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Rejoice & Shout also features rare footage of performances from gospel's most notable singers, including Mahalia Jackson, the Dixie Hummingbirds and the Staple Singers.

The incomparable Mahalia Jackson, originally a hairdresser from New Orleans and a protégé of Dorsey’s, is shown in a strong, unvarnished performance from “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Her success illustrates a paradox of gospel: She sold millions of records but was barely acknowledged on the pop and R&B charts. To this day, except for an unpredictable mainstream hit like “Oh Happy Day,” by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, black gospel remains largely under the mass-media radar, a commercial category unto itself.

The lineage continues with the elaborately outfitted Clara Ward Singers (a stage mother, Gertrude, and her daughters, Clara and Willa); the competing Five Blind Boys of Mississippi and the Blind Boys of Alabama (featured in a 1982 gospel musical, “The Gospel at Colonus”); and the Staple Singers. Mavis Staples, whose comments are woven throughout the film, recalls how in the early days of the civil rights movement, the family, led by her guitar-playing father, Pops, incorporated freedom songs and some Bob Dylan numbers into their shows.

The history concludes with the Rev. James A. Cleveland, the renowned choir leader who helped train Aretha Franklin (who is not seen or heard in the film); the Edwin Hawkins Singers; the Winans; and Andraé Crouch, the seven-time Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, arranger, producer and pastor, and an architect of contemporary Christian music. A major asset of the film is its refusal to use tiny musical snippets; most of the numbers are fairly complete performances.

Like nearly every other musical genre, African-American gospel is a continuing dialogue between roots on one side and technological innovation and secular influences on the other. What accounts for its integrity? It must be the inviolable core of faith at its center.