Coach Ride Gospel

The songs heard in London and Birmingham's Pentecostal Churches are not always very Caribbean in flavour. Most of them are hymns, sung from the book. Some of these hymns, sung from American books, resemble country and western songs. This is because so many of the West Indian churches originated in the American South as ‘poor white’ fellowships, and afterwards spread to the Caribbean. Young Black British members prefer American black gospel and learn its shifting styles from cassette tapes, note by note. Such American songs were once sung by enormous, frantically conducted District Choirs. These are now being gradually replaced by smaller Chorales, as is the case in Black America. But the third type of city Church music, the Chorus, has a definite Islands character. Some of the repetitive Holy Ghost tranceinducing choruses are of English Sunday School and ‘happy clappy’ origin, but by the time Brother Clarendon on the drums, Brother Ray on saxophone and all the Sisters with tambourines have finished with them, they sound Caribbean enough for a Holy Rolling Carnival

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