"To Be Young, Gifted and Black." So goes the aphorism by 1960s R&B singer-songwriter Nina Simone.
Perhaps not precisely an aphorism, Simone nonetheless captured and cross-pollinated, in her eponymous song, a revolutionary black and flower power exaltation and ode to African-American identity during the late '60s. From her vibrantly colored shawls to her covers of famous standards, Simone's lyric and rhythmic reinterpretations bled their way into the pop cultural lexicon, straddling the line between the hedonism of blues and the divinity of gospel tradition.
While Simone is not covered in Don McGlynn's Rejoice and Shout, the juxtaposition between sin and the saintly is highlighted in his traditionally constructed gospel documentary. But this documentary is not a sinister forewarning for hedonists to atone. In fact, it's just the opposite, an open-arms, welcoming embrace.
To the gospel neophyte, Rejoice and Shout routinely chronicles a music genre's roots and evolution, mostly managing not to preach to the choir or the already converted. The documentary is instead an introductory celebration -- quite literally, as its title suggests a musical rejoice intended for the toe-tapping pews of the movie auditorium.
Rejoice and Shout begins in the cotton fields of the American south where traditional European hymns were chanted through exotic syncopation -- slave songs of hardship and the overcoming of subjugation by sonorous perseverance. McGlynn utilizes the back and forth between talking-head 'experts' and found performance footage, interviewing religious and gospel historians as well as musicians Mavis Staples and Smokey Robinson.
From thereon director Don McGlynn moves through time -- from the very first recorded gospel album by The Dinwiddie Colored Quartet in 1902 to the genre's integration into popular culture through the likes of Mahalia Jackson on the Ed Sullivan Show, The Blind Boys of Alabama, and beyond.
However, Rejoice and Shout is structurally problematic, undoubtedly one-sided and devoutly Christian in its teaching. By focusing on these musical talents as a vessel for spiritual mysticism, McGlynn juxtaposes the origins of Pentecostal proselytizing through the communion of poor African-Americans set against the civil rights upheaval. The film's coda reductively and crassly martyrs Reverend Martin Luther King and president Barack Obama as black spokespersons of Christian teaching, both of whom had their political campaigns led and promulgated by secularists -- citing constitutional as opposed to religious doctrine, the basis for racial equality in a society founded on humanist principals.
In interview, Robinson speaks of a monotheistic universality -- recognition of God's pervasive grace in the tangible world. His proud religious fervor diminishes the talent of these performers -- as if a lucky few were plucked from the multitude to sing out and convert. Admittedly a documentary does not need to put on the appearance of impartiality, but for the non-believer, the film works best without the glorifying rhetoric.
As a mix tape (or ipod shuffle) of gospel music, Rejoice and Shout is a wonderful starting place, albeit a superficial chronicle of a music genre's evolution. It acts as a reminder that when pipes blare in church, they don't necessarily need to come from an organ.
