How To Make Gospel Music Work For You: A guide for Gospel Music Makers and Marketers

By Roy N Francis

How to make Gospel Music work for you is an informative and authoritative guide to gospel music in Britain today. In this engaging and readable book, Roy shows how the music, which began in the West Indian Churches started by the Windrush Generation in the 1950s and 60s, rose to become the gospel music we know and love in Britain today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Filament Publishing
• Release date: Jun 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781913192297

Roy N Francis

Roy Francis has been involved in Gospel music from a young age and would in the early years accompany his father, a pioneer of the Black Pentecostal movement in Britain, playing the piano at all the church services. His talent drew the attention of other church leaders and soon he was in demand to play at their services. Roy went on to become a teacher, an Award-Winning television producer, concert promoter, and consultant. He was the producer of Channel ground-breaking gospel music series, 'People Get Ready', producer of BBC's 'Songs of Praise' and the highly successful multi-million selling 'Donnie McClurkin Live in London' concert and DVD. Today he spends his time as agent and mentor, working with leading as well as unknown gospel artists.

Book preview

Introduction

The initial idea for writing this book came from Chris Day, my publisher, colleague, and friend. For a long time, Chris has been telling me to write a book and put down ‘my extensive knowledge and experience of gospel music’ so that others can draw from it. As I didn’t see myself as a writer, (I still don’t), I made all the usual excuses, but all this changed when I ran a series of gospel music workshops with Marcia Dixon at the Croydon Park Hotel in South London. What these workshops, (‘Pathway to Gospel Music Success,’) showed me, was that almost anyone today can record a CD and with the internet and social media, can have it available literally to the whole world with a few clicks of a mouse. But having the ability to record a CD is one thing, knowing how to succeed with the music is an altogether different matter. This is where How to Make Gospel Music Work for You comes in, for what I offer in the following pages is how gospel artists can do this.

How to Make Gospel Music Work for You is in two parts and can either be read as a whole, in two sections or as a reference book seeking out specific areas of interest. In the first part of the book I offer a personal view of how West Indian Christians came to Britain in the 50s and 60s as part of the Windrush Generation and how the music that they brought with them developed and became the gospel music we know today. In this section I also explain some of the reasons why they came, briefly sketch the economic, social and political background to them coming, chart the setting up of their churches and trace the development of their music. Like most West Indians, they never intended to stay anymore than five years but towards the end of the 1960s, their economic situation had improved and seeing what this meant to them and their children, they therefore began to rethink the idea of going back home and put this on hold for the time being. As Christians, this also meant looking for permanent places of worship. The network of Black Pentecostal churches that exists today in Britain is a result of this decision to stay and with their music firmly rooted in a West Indian church tradition, this is the legacy they’ve also handed down to us and to future generations.

In this part of the book, I also look at the music these early Christians came with, the music they played, the songs they sang and I offer a sneak preview of West Indian Church services to show what churches were like then. Other themes which I explore in this section are a brief history of gospel music, the British and American gospel artists who have influenced British gospel and what happened to the music when it came into contact with the songs of the Billy Graham Crusade and the music of Jim Reeves and Tennessee Ernie Ford.

To most people, the decade 1970-80 is considered the Golden Age of British gospel music and I show why, as well as chart the main achievements of the music during this period when gospel seemed to be everywhere in the country, on television, on the radio, in the news, in concerts, at church events, at charity shows, colleges and universities, and at major pop festivals including Glastonbury! During this time, every American gospel artist who was anybody came to Britain to perform and it seemed as if London had suddenly become the gospel capital of the world.

In the second part of this book the emphasis is more practical - a how to succeed in gospel music - and I offer a road map for gospel artists who are struggling with their music and show how they can succeed with it. Unlike artists signed to a record company, most UK gospel artists are independent and as such have to do everything themselves for their music. They have to find the finance to do the recording, the money to produce the CD, a Director to shoot the video, and on top of this, they have to acquire the skills to do their own marketing and promotions. Although there’s plenty of information available to help them - much of which is free - they still need to know where to find it and crucially how to apply it to their music if they are to succeed with it.

In this section of the book, I offer workable solutions, tips, ideas and no-nonsense suggestions which some artists might find disagreeable and may even be put off by it. If this is you, I would encourage you to read through the book first, especially this section, as what you think you might need to succeed, with your music, might not be as hard as you think. Others of you will see this as a challenge and rise to it and you are the ones who are likely to succeed with your music, but you’ll need a carefully thought out plan and action to do so.

For a clarification, I frequently use the term ‘West Indies’ or ‘West Indian’ throughout the first part of the book rather than ‘Caribbean’ which is the more politically correct term. I do this to distinguish between people from the former British colonies in the Caribbean and those whose colonial experience were with other European powers. I also use the term ‘gospel music’ ostensibly to refer to Black gospel music, as this is generally known, used and understood in the music business. I know the term today is very elastic, but I use it as how a musicologist understands it, as a separate and distinct genre of music with its roots embedded in the music of the ‘Spirituals’ and from which it has developed.

Finally, this book could never have been written without the help of many people who have supported, encouraged me, and significantly fed into my collective education and consciousness. For this, I’m thankful to all those who have played a part and I forever remain in your debt.

Roy Francis

October 2018.

PART ONE: FROM WINDRUSH TO BRITISH GOSPEL MUSIC

figure

They Came With Their Christianity

On the 22 nd of June 1948, an old Troop Carrier, The Empire Windrush slipped into Tilbury Docks in the East End of London which was once the principal port for handling goods and grain coming into the country. Although the day was warm, it was also a little cold and on board the old Carrier The Empire Windrush were 492 West Indians who had travelled 8,000 miles to get to Britain. ¹ They came because work was plentiful and because they saw it as their patriotic duty to ‘go and help rebuild the mother country,’ or at least that’s what the poster said back home. Now, as they stepped on to British soil, nothing could have prepared them for what they were about to experience, nor could they have known what to expect.

The first thing they noticed was how old and grey everything looked and how pressed up all the buildings were against each other. Where they had come from, the light was bright and the sky blue and nothing like this greyness existed in the West Indies. As a first picture of Britain, this was very disappointing, and it didn’t take long for them to realise what they had come to. They had come to a country exhausted by war and in need of repair. True, the terrible bombings of the war years was over but its effect still lingered everywhere, visible on burnt-out buildings, factories, shops and on the homes where people once lived.

Rationing was still in place when these West Indians arrived and household goods were in short supply. Life was hard, people had little money, and what little they had they spent locally on food and household goods in family-run shops in their neighbourhood. There were frequent shortages and although people tried to cope as best they could, they were exhausted at the repeated stoppages of water, gas and electricity. Housing too was short, as the war had destroyed 25% of the housing stock, which left many people homeless or forced to live in overcrowded slums in the cities.

Labour was in power when the first West Indians came - in the middle of implementing their radical economic programme. First, they cleared the slums in the cities and started to build new homes for people to live in. ‘Prefabs’ or prefabricated homes as these became known, were houses built in factories and assembled on site, and as homes they were cheap to build, cheap to rent, had an inside toilet and came with a refrigerator. Soon, they became very popular and complemented the government’s other housing policy of moving people out of the slums and rehousing them in the New Towns it had built in places like Bracknell in Berkshire, Harlow in Essex, Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, Telford in Shropshire and Cwmbran in Wales. More than half a million homes were built this way, providing accommodation for over 2 million people.

With its slum clearance and house building programme under way, the government next turned its attention to the economy. It reformed the education system, set up the National Health Service and set out a far-reaching programme of nationalisation. The idea behind this policy was to bring all the major industries such as coal, steel, iron, gas, the railways, and electricity under the control of the state, with the aim of creating jobs, rebuilding the economy, lifting the country out of poverty and setting it on its way into the modern age.

Within three years, Nationalisation was a huge success. Output rose, export increased, and unemployment fell. Consumer goods rose also, especially among labour-saving devices like washing machines and vacuum cleaners with a corresponding increase in cars, radio and television sets. The construction industry saw a similar rise in productivity with thousands of office buildings constructed to provide work for the army of female workers coming on to the labour market for the first time. All in all the economy grew, and the country began to recover and prosper. Surprisingly in the General Election of 1953, Labour was unexpectedly defeated and the country returned the Conservative party back to power.

The Conservatives continued with Labour’s economic policies and the economy continued to grow, bringing real benefits to many people. For the first time since the war, workers saw an increase in their wages and a rise in their standard of living. A real sense of economic well-being gripped the country, but it soon became apparent that in spite of all this economic success, there was an acute shortage of workers. The government’s answer was to turn to its former colonies in the West Indies to try to help plug this gap. What the country needed were workers and as they were plentiful in the West Indies, what the government did was to pass legislation, ‘The British Nationality Act’, which conferred citizenship on anyone in the West Indies who was willing to travel to Britain to work.

At first the take up was slow, but as word got around in the West Indies that jobs were plentiful in Britain and that the country was crying out for workers, things soon began to change. The 492 West Indians who arrived at Tilbury on June the 22nd were the first to take advantage of this policy and it is against this background that the bulk of West Indians came to Britain in 1948, and in subsequent years in the 1960s.

Large numbers of skilled, semi-skilled workers were recruited for hospitals services, while others gained employment in industry and transport. The 1961 census recorded 200,000 West Indians in Britain…..of which half were Jamaicans.²

Most of the West Indians who came to Britain to work were agricultural labours who mainly farmed smallholdings in their countries. The majority were Jamaicans who were mostly in their thirties, and as they were young, they didn’t mind travelling to Britain although most hadn’t even visited Kingston, the capital city of Jamaica.

Apart from work, there are other reasons why West Indians came to Britain. Many former soldiers who had fought in the Second World War, and unable to find work when they got back home, were on their way back to Britain. Many also came to Britain to escape the poverty and poor living conditions in their homeland, while most Jamaicans came because of the effect of the hurricane of 1951 and also because of the restrictions that The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 placed on them going to work in America.

When the first West Indians arrived in 1948, this was not the first time that Black people had been in the country as there is plenty of evidence to show that they were in Britain as far back as Roman times, during the Middle Ages and in the 17th and 18th century, when they were either slaves, servants, or the occasional ‘free man’. Much nearer our time, during the first world war, Black people fought for both ‘King and Country’ and Black servicemen saw active service in East Africa, the Middle East and on the Western Front. In the Second World War, over 500,000 soldiers from the British Empire and Dominions fought for Britain including 10,000 from the West Indies.³

Following the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, many West Indians left the colonies to enlist in the army in the UK and were recruited into British regiments. In October and November 1915 many of the contingents were brought together at Seaford, West Sussex, and were formed into the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR). The regiment’s battalions saw service in East Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, France and Italy. Two battalions were involved in fighting against the Turks in Palestine and Jordan in 1918. A total of 397 officers and 15,204 other ranks served in the BWIR.’⁴

When the first West Indians arrived in Britain in 1948, those who had nowhere to live were sent to Clapham South underground station which the government had previously used as a shelter during the Second World War, and there below the station, they were given food and a bed. It didn’t take long however for them to find work as this was plentiful, but finding somewhere to live was an altogether different matter. Today there are plenty of stories within the West Indian Community which recalls the experiences West Indians faced when they went looking for somewhere to live. Often they would be met with insulting and humiliating signs pinned to people’s windows, making it clear that, ‘Coloureds, Blacks, Dogs, or Irish,’ were not wanted and that, ‘No Niggers Need Apply’. And if this wasn’t bad enough, when West Indians did manage to find somewhere to live, it was usually subsubstandard, expensive and often in the worst part of a city where for the first time they found themselves living next to white people.

Most West Indians who came to Britain knew very little about white people, and what little experience they had was limited to those white people they had met in their homeland - usually those in an official capacity. Most didn’t know that there were white people in Britain who were as poor as they were, believing that all white people were rich or well-to-do. White people in Britain, on the other hand, also knew next to nothing about West Indians or Black people and the little they knew was based on the negative stereotypes they had learnt as being part of the British Empire. Both groups were in for a surprise when they started to live next to each other with implications stretching far into the distant future.

Apart from the British Nationality Act, which the government used to attract West Indians to travel to Britain, the government also sent out officials to the West Indies to encourage more and more people to travel to Britain to work. One such official who helped in this, especially in the recruitment of trainee nurses from Barbados, was Enoch Powell. This is the same Enoch Powell who in 1968, as Tory Shadow Minister, made the infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in which he warned the Government that if it didn’t change its immigration policy, there would be ‘blood on the streets of England’. To his credit, Edward Heath the Tory Leader, sacked Powell for stirring up anti-immigration feelings and threw him out of the Shadow Cabinet. But the damage was done, Powell had given an official voice to the level of racism which first began when West Indians arrived in 1948 and which by 1968 had grown into a crescendo.

Not everyone in Britain welcomed the West Indians when they first arrived and as their numbers grew in the 1960s, the level of racism and prejudice they experienced was very high. A lot of the hatred in the early years was merely blind prejudice and competition for the limited supply of accommodation and school places, but as the years went by, this grew into outright loathing and rejection. In fact, the situation got so bad that during