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 Contemporary Christian music would be the closest sounding style to pop or Top 40 music. It is by far the greatest selling of all the categories. It consists of a variety of styles that focus on mostly spiritual topics, such as prayer and praise (including artist like Chris Tomlin, MercyMe, Casting Crowns, Mark Schultz, Twila Paris and Rebecca St. James.)
Christian alternative rock encompasses a variety of artists and styles. In recent years, it has started to be accepted into secular circles including bands like Mae, Relient K, Switchfoot, Anberlin, Jeremy Camp, Factor seven, mewithoutYou and P.O.D. Many alternative Christian rock bands focus on Christian beliefs and the struggles that they have encountered, often leading to an interesting insight into Christian beliefs. Gospel Music is divided into two types. Urban Gospel would be similar to pop and r&b with artists like Kirk Franklin, Smokie Norful and Yolanda Adams. Traditional Gospel music features more of a choir sound. Southern Gospel has a country sound and uses gospel quartets. Interestingly, the only 4 grammy awards Elvis won were for his Southern Gospel albums.
The band that really broke the mold and made Christian contemporary music more popular was dc Talk. Members Kevin Max, Toby McKeehan and Michael Tait blended their separate backgrounds and faith to make a funky modern style of music that no band since has compared to - with everything from R&B to hip hop, dc Talk really made waves in the music industry by not only saying exactly what they meant, but saying it to a beat and tune that really caught the ear of the listener.
There is record of the earliest music of the Christian church in a few New Testament books of what are probably hymns. Some of these fragments are still sung as hymns today in the Orthodox Church, including "Awake, awake O sleeper" on the occasion of someone's baptism.
Being Jewish, Jesus and his disciples sang the psalms from memory. However, without a centralised music industry, the repertoire of ordinary people was much greater than it is today, so they probably knew other songs too. Early Christians continued to sing the psalms much as they were sung in the synagogues in the first century. [from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_music] |
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