Gospel songs and hymns, USA

The gospel song or gospel hymn is a genre of Christian worship-song that developed in revivals held in Great Britain and the USA, 1865-74. Its primary antecedents were camp meeting songs which joined personal witness and freedom of expression. and the widely popular Sunday school song. Start-up music publishers (see Publishing and publishers, USA*), exploited the product of pittance-paid, albeit talented songwriters and composers, and banded with organizers, preachers and song leaders of white northern urban revivals to sell this stylized religious song to an expanding market consisting of revival audiences, local churches, and Sunday schools. The identifying name and representative styles...