Gospel Music in Africa

Abstract

This chapter outlines the development of gospel music in Africa, highlighting particularly its interrelationship with the rise of neoliberalism since the 1980s. Carried by the proliferation of Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity, gospel has become the most pervasive popular music genre in Africa. Authors have noted a strong convergence between neo-Pentecostalism and neoliberalism, both worshipping prosperity, wealth accumulation, and capitalist consumerism as (quasi-)religious devotional acts. The first part of this chapter provides the conceptual background and gives a broader overview of the existing literature on gospel music in Africa. The second part, then, presents a case study of Christian popular music in Ghana, examining more in depth how gospel music features and promotes ideologies of prosperity and consumption, and how it contributes to the making of neoliberal subjectivity and the constitution of neoliberal bodies.