Monique Ingalls
I'm an ethnomusicologist and assistant professor of music at Baylor University. My research explores the effects of recent social, cultural, and technological change on evangelical and charismatic Christian congregational music-making in North America and beyond. My monograph _Singing the Congregation: How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community_ was published by Oxford University Press in October 2018. Other articles on the topic appear in journals, encyclopedias, and edited books in the fields of congregational music studies, ethnomusicology, media studies, hymnology, religious studies, and ecclesiology; recent topics include how current trends in popular music are influencing worship; how and why gospel and praise and worship music are spreading around the world; and how digital audiovisual media influence how worship music is made and marketed.
My new research project examines the historical development and cultural significance of British gospel choirs. This multi-year ethnographic project will draw from interviews and observations in Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, and London, using gospel community choirs as a window for understanding the various meanings and shifting roles of African American music in urban, multicultural, post-Christian contexts.
I serve as one of three Series Editors for Routledge's Congregational Music Studies Series (https://www.routledge.com/series/ACONGMUS). I have co-edited of the books _Christian Congregational Music: Performance, Identity, and Experience_ (Ashgate Press, 2013), _The Spirit of Praise: Music & Worship in Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity_ (Penn State University Press, 2015), and _Making Congregational Music Local in Christian Communities Worldwide_ (Routledge, 2018). I co-founded and was first president of the Society for Ethnomusicology's Section on Religion, Music, and Sound (groups.google.com/group/SRM-SIG/) and am co-founder and program chair of the biennial international conference "Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives" held at Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford (congregationalmusic.org).
Supervisors: Timothy Rommen and Nicholas Cook
My new research project examines the historical development and cultural significance of British gospel choirs. This multi-year ethnographic project will draw from interviews and observations in Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, and London, using gospel community choirs as a window for understanding the various meanings and shifting roles of African American music in urban, multicultural, post-Christian contexts.
I serve as one of three Series Editors for Routledge's Congregational Music Studies Series (https://www.routledge.com/series/ACONGMUS). I have co-edited of the books _Christian Congregational Music: Performance, Identity, and Experience_ (Ashgate Press, 2013), _The Spirit of Praise: Music & Worship in Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity_ (Penn State University Press, 2015), and _Making Congregational Music Local in Christian Communities Worldwide_ (Routledge, 2018). I co-founded and was first president of the Society for Ethnomusicology's Section on Religion, Music, and Sound (groups.google.com/group/SRM-SIG/) and am co-founder and program chair of the biennial international conference "Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives" held at Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford (congregationalmusic.org).
Supervisors: Timothy Rommen and Nicholas Cook
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Articles and Book Chapters by Monique Ingalls
Ingalls, Monique, Swijghuisen Reigersberg, Muriel and Sherinian, Zoe (eds.) Routledge
This introduction examines the categories of musical inculturation, contextualization, and indigenization. We argue that these three terms, though useful up to a point, are inadequate to account for the interplay between structure, agency, change, and continuity within the diverse music-making practices of Christian communities around the world. We propose ‘musical localization’ as a more useful umbrella category to describe the processes by which Christian communities worldwide adapt, adopt, create, perform, and share congregational music. We define musical localization as the process whereby Christian communities take a variety of musical practices – some considered ‘indigenous,’ some ‘foreign,’ some shared across spatial and cultural divides; some linked to past practice, some innovative – and make them locally meaningful and useful in the construction of Christian beliefs, theology, practice, and identity.
In addressing the interconnected themes of performance, identity and experience, the volume explores several topics of interest to a broader humanities and social sciences readership, including the influence of globalization and mass mediation on congregational music style and performance; the use of congregational music to shape multifaceted identities; the role of mass mediated congregational music in shaping transnational communities; and the function of music in embodying and imparting religious belief and knowledge.
Keywords
public religion,
religious music,
religious identity,
religion and multiculturalism,
religious festivals,
congregational music
In order to illustrate these complex negotiations, this dissertation comprises two parts which provide complementary examinations of the relationships between sound, space, and evangelical identity while differing in scope and methodological approach. The four chapters of Part I construct a narrative of the development of the contemporary worship music repertory from the late 1960s to the late 2000s. Employing personal interviews and evangelical primary sources, each of these chapters traces the institutions, social networks, and cultural shifts that accompanied and influenced contemporary worship music’s creation and led to its acceptance as a widespread evangelical practice. The three chapters of Part II offer an in-depth ethnographic and theoretical exploration of the relationship between contemporary worship music and evangelical identity through close readings of the three performance spaces of concert, conference, and local church. These chapters demonstrate how these worship spaces serve as forums in which evangelicals negotiate broader societal shifts while broadly disseminating discourses and practices which connect local churches with the translocal evangelical community. By showing the ways in which contemporary worship music, and the meanings and discourses it embodies, moves between these spaces, this study demonstrates the powerful role of music in constructing an “evangelical imaginary” through which evangelicals negotiate local and translocal contexts, concerns, and convictions. By using the sites and sounds of musical performance to inform a discussion of religious identity, this dissertation opens avenues for exploring music’s role in the negotiation of religious faith and practice in the modern world.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements iv
Abstract vi
List of Tables x
List of Figures xi
List of Music Examples xii
Introduction: Evangelicalism, Contemporary Worship Music, and Identity 1
PART I: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
OF CONTEMPORARY WORSHIP MUSIC, c. 1970-2008
Chapter 1. A New Song from the Evangelical Margins:
Jesus People, Evangelical Youth, and the
Beginnings of Contemporary Worship Music 52
Chapter 2. From the Margins to the Mainstream:
“Praise and Worship” in the 1980s 73
Chapter 3. Waging the Worship Wars:
The Debate over Contemporary Worship Music
and the Redefinition of Evangelical Worship in the 1990s 101
Chapter 4. “Post-War” Worship in the Twenty-First Century: Foreign
Invasion, Commercialization, and the Rise of “Modern Worship”
135
PART II: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS
OF THREE PERFORMANCE SPACES OF WORSHIP
Chapter 5. Performing Authenticity, Forming Identity:
Worship Music’s Concert Spaces and the Quest for
“Real Worship” 175
Chapter 6. “We Have Come Here to Meet God”:
Spiritual Journeys and Eschatological Sounds
in Conference Worship 259
Chapter 7. Finding the Church’s Voice:
Navigating Worship Styles, Consumer Economies,
and Competing Identities in the Local Church 339
Conclusion: Re-sounding Worship, Re-forming Identity 404
Bibliography 417
Books by Monique Ingalls
The introduction sets out the book’s scope, argument, and goals, places the musical repertoire and religious community in historical and cultural context, and frames the study in relationship to recent scholarship in ethnomusicology, evangelical studies, and congregational music studies. It defines contemporary worship music in North American and global perspectives and discusses its relationship to closely related Christian popular music genres. The chapter then situates the rise of contemporary worship music in relationship to widespread conflicts over shifts in evangelical worship practices known as the “worship wars,” the development of the Christian music recording industry, the adoption of new technologies within congregational worship, and the influence of pentecostal-charismatic Christian practices. Finally, in describing the book’s research methods, I explore the challenges faced navigating distance and proximity in the field as a result of my own religious upbringing as an evangelical and my complex relationship to communities in my study.
Papers by Monique Ingalls