That Old Time Religion: The Influence of West and Central African Religious Culture on the Music of the Azusa Street Revival

Abstract

The Azusa Street Revival was a movement started in 1906 by a small group of black individuals at a prayer meeting in Los Angeles, California. The revival is largely considered the beginning of the Pentecostal movement. This paper investigates the relationship between the worship practices of the Azusa Street Revival and the musical and religious traditions of the West and Central African peoples who were the ancestors of some of the most prominent and influential participants in the movement. These practices, which include spirit possession, physical movement and rhythm, musical collaboration, and indeterminate times of worship, seemingly made their way from Africa into the daily lives of African American slaves, where they were adopted by participants at the American camp meetings of the early nineteenth century. From there, these West and Central African musical traditions became instituted in the holiness movement, the precursor to the Azusa Street Revival.