| abstract |
The sonic and aesthetic nuances of Black religious traditions have often gone underexamined as critical resources for Christian ethical reflections and scholarship. Many Christian ethics scholars have focused on text-based analyses of lyrics, doctrinal statements, sermons, and archives. Such an approach limits ethical reflection to those Black religious traditions afforded sociopolitical proximity to textuality, archives, and the mainstream. More scholarship on how the sounds and aesthetic modalities assembled and performed in specific Black religious contexts could enrich scholarly discourses on Black collective flourishing.
My dissertation endeavors to close this gap by examining the sonic and aesthetic practices of Chicago's Black Spiritual Churches during the period of 1929-1950. I contend that the performance of Black Spiritual Church sound and aesthetics in Chicago, during the period of 1929-1950, offer pathways for the insurgent re-imaginings of Black being essential to inclusive visions of Black communal flourishings at the core of contemporary Afro-Pessimist and liberationist debates about the future of Black being and possibilities. Specifically, I explore the sounds and aesthete of the First Church of Deliverance during this period for distinct sonic traditions, textures, and practices to construct a Black gospel sonic ethics able to constructively articulate nuances in Black Studies debates about the efficacy and value of hope as an ethical norm for securing Black communal flourishing and moral formation in the very presence of widespread anti-blackness. Generally, Black sonic ethics gives close attention to how the sounds and aesthetics produced and performed within the Black sacred music-making collectives contains tools and resources for cultivating and interrogating communal visions for flourishing.
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