Church Is Where “I Acquired My Singing Tactics”

Abstract

This chapter explores the influence of singing in Mount Zion Baptist Church on Armstrong’s development as a musician.Although we do not know exactly what Armstrong sang at his church there are transcriptions of the singing in New Hope Baptist Church just across the Mississippi River in Gretna. The transcriptions reveal a similar blues influenced tonality to the street songs and barbershop cadences sung elsewhere in New Orleans. This chapter explores the pentatonic tendency of melody in African American song; whereas the supporting lines tend to contain chromatic intervals and give rise to chromatic harmony.