The Power of Gospel in the Black Arts Movement: A Conversation with Claudrena N. Harold

ABSTRACT This interview focuses on gospel music, which is a foundational element of soul music. Combining insights, at times, from her family background, but mostly from research in her book When Sunday Comes: Gospel Music in the Soul and Hip Hop Eras (2020), which borrows its title from Donald Lawrence and the Tri-City Singers hit recording “When Sunday Comes” (1995), Claudrena N. Harold offers an historian’s perspective on gospel music in the late 1960s. Harold discusses gospel artists who appear in Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s film Summer of Soul, contextualizes gospel artists in Questlove’s film within the history of gospel music itself, and draws connections between sacred and secular forms of Black music, that is, gospel, soul, and funk. Of particular significance, Harold argues that gospel music was part of the Black Arts Movement. Harold therefore offers a unique perspective on gospel, Summer of Soul, and the Black Arts Movement.