Gospel music is generally believed to have come from African American slaves. It was a way of expressing faith and praises through joyful music so very much distinctive of them. Most gospel music contains some downtrodden themes that can stir different emotions among its listeners; it has a passion that can be traced back to the slaves willful creation of their own worship hymns in spite of hard times. If you listen to gospel music carefully, youll understand the genius in it.

But the whites have also created a gospel music style of their own; the southern gospel music or simply white gospel. Southern gospel music is believed to have originated in the late 19th century from the white evangelical Americans. Its style, on the other hand, was believed to come from hymns. Typically, southern gospel music includes sparse instrumentation or none at all.

Contemporary Christian music is a fusion genre of southern gospel music and the bluegrass gospel is its subgenre. The latters mainstream popularity is attributed to its secular artists, including Elvis Presley, and evangelists, like Billy Graham and Jimmy Swaggart. But history has it that southern gospel music has been developed from the Holiness churches that arose in the first decade of the 20th century throughout the south. This phenomenon created new kind of music for this new forms of worshipin addition to those traditional hymns that were created in the 18th and 19th century.

Southern gospel music is called such so as to distinguish it from black gospel. Mostly, southern gospel and its roots are attributed to the published works and normal schools of Aldine S. Kieffer as well as Ephraim Ruebush. And like black gospel, southern gospel also has numerous notable artists and performers.