Amazing Grace: Obama Hits a Blue Note in Charleston
…music, it is rigidly structured but seemingly spontaneous.” The unexpected use of song within a spoken sermon is not unlike an ambitious solo that threatens the musical structure around it, but then brings it to a resolution that did not seem possible. Preachers who could pull off such feats from the pulpit, Davis once said, were regarded as the “word magicians” of the community. Some kind of magic certainly seemed to be required to end a week of…
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