The first time I remember listening to a Southern Gospel Concert, it was the Blue Ridge Boys and it was at a fair ground. Sounded a lot like Country to me, only better.

If someone whose only Christian musical influences to date had been Contemporary, Worship, Alternate...asked you to describe the difference between Christian Country and Southern Gospel, what would you say?

Funny, but it used to bug me when people would dis the Oaks music of the early to mid seventies saying it wasn't southern gospel. It sounded snooty to me then. I do defend myself by saying when I was younger I hadn't really been exposed to SG, so I didn't get it. :)

However, the other day I was listening to our SG station and there were I think around three songs in a row. None sounded SG to me. They all sounded Christian Country. I guess I am older now and realize that there should be differences and that there isn't necessarily anything wrong with either. The difference is that some prefer one to the other or some only prefer one.

With that being said, to me Country Gospel is pretty much country music with Christian lyrics. Of course, these days not even country music is country as it once was. However, since I have heard that even Contemporary Christian music has been described by some in the industry as being about 10 years behind where Pop music is, and knowing that SG is even further removed from that, maybe Christian Country is about where Country was in the sixties or seventies. ;)

I guess if I were pressed to give details in the difference I would start with things like acoustic guitars might play a prominent role, fiddles, steel guitars etc. Wait a minute, I could be describing early Goodman's music. ;) Another thing might be more twangy voices and talking, but none of these are totally required to be Christian Country as I know of some Country Gospel that don't have them all. However, I imagine at least one might be in it.

Well, I guess I didn't fully answer the question. You know how we men don't listen to every word a woman says. We learn to tune out. ;) So far I defined what I would call Country Gospel. Now on to Southern Gospel. I guess to me Southern Gospel has a lot of styles and is harder for me to define. Some of these are not exclusive to SG. However, somethings might be normally fairly strong Christian lyrics (not always though), many songs might sound like songs from the hymnal, but with more instrumentation. The instrumentation is important, but not the most important. The singers are usually heard over the instruments, it utilizes piano and other keyboards more than some genres, anymore there is generally some orchestration, melody seems more important than in some, there is usually a lot of passion in it. At one time there weren't as much in the way of dynamics or building, it maintained that level all the way through. There are still some singers and songs that way, but maybe not as much. Even then, although the energy level and dynamics might have stayed about the same, the endings did go higher and have a bit more power to them to give it a little extra punch at the end.
I am not sure how well I did at either definition, but at least I tried. :sticktongue:

I guess too lyrically sometimes the SG deals less with everyday life and more about eternal truth wheras Christian Country might get more into the everyday life stuff.

"I guess too lyrically sometimes the SG deals less with everyday life and more about eternal truth wheras Christian Country might get more into the everyday life stuff."

That's an interesting observation. It's easy to see the difference between SG and Worship or even a lot of CCM, SG talks about God whereas CCM/Worship generally talks to God.

But yes, I would say that out of all Christian music, Black Gospel and Southern Gospel probably talk about Heaven the most, generally speaking.

What about the heavy influence of harmony in SG compared to CCountry? Is there enough difference there to call that a defining characteristic?

I agree with instrumentation, CCountry is generally more strings, and SG more piano based, with other instruments around but not as prominent.

Vocals are definitely the focal point over instrumentation, and if you talk to an SG fan about a "Southern Gospel ending", we all know what we mean...but how would you describe it?

Would you agree with this statement: "More effort is spent to relay the emotion and intent of the song through the vocals rather than using instrumentation to set a mood or feeling. "

Thanks Kewman for your comments, I'm looking forward to hearing more of your observations!!

Well...coming from an artist....we get called Country Gospel a good bit and to me we are far from it...

To me, like KewMann :o , CG is more country songs with Christian lyrics. They have a distinct twangy sound in most of their songs, many times you can be listening to a CG artist and be able to compare them to several Country artists you think they sound like. Like for instance Terry Terrell, I love this guy, reminds me of about three different Country singers. However, Ivan Parker reminds me of none...lol...you get my drift??

And I do agree with you on the harmony thing, LowRain...beautiful, pure harmony is a major part of SG. On our cds we have a huge mixture of music. We go from one song being traditional SG to the next having a bluegrass sound to the next having a country sound and the next a progressive sound and so on and so on. On most CG cds you're going to get just that, CG. And I don't mean that's a bad thing, I mean that there's no doubt about it when you hear it, it's definitely CG.

Sorry if I made no sense at all...lol...we have this one song on an older cd...I don't know if you have it LowRain, you prolly do.....called When We Get To Heaven, it's pretty country to me...but then again the song right after it is undeniably SG...lol...

We're all used to that. ;) :P

shudup KewMann :noway: ....lol...