Continue on." We'd like to hear from you for potential future stories. "When we're dead and gone," Mangum says, smiling, "this music is gonna continue on.
They don't learn from recordings or sheet music instead, they learn shouts person-to-person from elders like Mangum. Youngsters are backfilling the bands, keeping the continuity going. Joining a shout band is a commitment - in addition to Sunday morning, this church holds musical services six nights a week - yet the holy trombones of the United House of Prayer for All People seem to be doing just fine. "If I'm burdened down, I ask him to lift me up. "If I'm sick while I'm playing, I ask God to heal me," Mangum says. Mangum, who's a barber when he's not blowing his trombone, estimates that there are 50 to 75 shout bands across the country. "We're not trying to make a living with this music. "Our music is not designed for the dollar," says Cedric Mangum, a famed Charlotte shout trombonist. And shout bands are not particularly well-known, even though they play occasional festivals and have performed at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. They're similar to but distinct from the second-line bands in New Orleans. Shout bands are an exceptional tradition in the great sweep of American sacred music. Sounds of Zion leader Trey Epps adds, "The shout is pretty much like how we give praise - how we give God thanks for everything he's done for us." And you get something out of it for yourself," sousaphonist Andre Guy says. "You know when you're playing the horn, it's a revelation that you get from God, like we say, to touch the people to touch their hearts and their minds. Charlotte, its birthplace, has 17 congregations - more than any other city. The denomination has some 140 churches across the country with a million and a half members. The mother church is in Washington, D.C., in an imposing gold-domed structure the church calls God's White House. The United House of Prayer for All People is known for two unique traditions: mass baptisms by fire hose and exuberant brass bands. Sometime in the 1940s, trombone choirs became a signature of the United House of Prayer. That was the year its founder, a charismatic evangelist named Charles Manuel "Sweet Daddy" Grace preached a tent revival here in Charlotte's Second Ward neighborhood. The United House of Prayer came into being sometime after the summer of 1926. You can hear how the instruments shout back and forth, like a call and response or a gospel quartet. No one knows exactly how trombones ended up in church. The "back men" are riffing furiously while the "run men" - the soloists in front - are bent at 45-degree angles flinging their slides with such force, it seems as though they'll sail across the Sunday hats of the women seated in the congregation. The trombones keep it up for 5, 10, 15 minutes. Think of them as an accelerant, to both channel the musicians' expression of the Holy Spirit and to intensify the congregation's experience. These brass instruments are not a supplement to the service, like a typical church choir. The trombones collectively play a fearsome glissando, then a cymbal crashes and a man shrieks in uncontained spiritual excitement.
#Shout it out trombone plus#
Nineteen trombones, plus a sousaphone and percussionists, are seated between the congregation and the pulpit, which is shaped like Noah's Ark. In the United House of Prayer for All People, it's all about the trombones.īy midmorning, tithes have been taken and testimonials offered, and the members of Sounds of Zion are warming up for another three-hour service inside the formidable church on Statesville Avenue in Charlotte, N.C. In the Bible, Psalm 150 tells the faithful to praise the Lord with trumpet, harp, tambourine, stringed instrument and cymbal. We want to discover and celebrate the many ways in which people make spiritual music - individually and collectively, inside and outside houses of worship. For the next year, NPR will take a musical journey across America, which is one of the most religiously diverse countries on earth.
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