Chase Castle

The Gospel in Black and White: Race and Popular Culture in American Hymns

The Gospel in Black and White offers a sweeping history about the cultural origins of gospel music in the United States. Focusing on the years between 1875 and 1915, this book traces how gospel emerged in the aftermath of the Civil War as a distinct genre that blended religious song with popular music. Drawing on African American spirituals, blackface minstrelsy, and sentimental parlor songs, gospel hymns developed at the intersection of race, commerce, and evangelical fervor.

Moving beyond conventional narratives that segregate Black and white gospel traditions, this book reveals how gospel has always existed in a space of cultural entanglement shaped by collaboration, appropriation, and shared performance. Through detailed examinations of revival meetings, religious education, and missions, The Gospel in Black and White uncovers social dynamics that fueled the creation of one of America’s most enduring and varied musical genres.

Chase Castle is a music historian. His research explores race and popular culture in American religious music during the nineteenth century. Castle uses material archives and affect theory to show how music operates in cultural history. His articles have been published by the Journal of the Society for American Music and the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Castle received a PhD in Music from the University of Pennsylvania in 2024. He is also an active organist and choral conductor.