Beyounce is a bad example. She's is definitely a Pop singer. I really don't detect any "Soul" stylings in her singing. That should have been painfully clear at this weekends award show.

>Keeping Ahead of Whitey culminated in Soul music, which drew
>its inspiration from the Black Church. If you wanted to Keep
>Ahead of Whitey, you couldn’t do much better than to look
>inward to the Church, a place that was so unremittingly “us”
>and which traditionally held much fascination and fear in
>the white imagination.
>
>The Church was a place that was at the center of the black
>community, and its music was fairly unique, rejecting most
>of the stylings of American commercial music… of course, it
>wasn’t long before Whitey discovered that once you could
>scrub the music clean of some of the more unsettling
>elements of the Church such as the spirit possession and the
>angry shouting (whites tend to interpret any instance where
>blacks raise their voices as “angry”… go figger), they had
>some pretty cool sounds.

I'm with you, up until this point...

>As a result, the Church became the new center of
>authenticity in American music. We learned that black
>singers were viewed as more “real” if we could believe that
>they were plucked out of the choir of the Bethel AME in East
>Hamhock, Alabama and that they were in essence untainted by
>commercialism. At the same time, white singers found that
>they were bestowed with instant authenticity and gravitas
>when they backed their songs with a bunch of fat black
>gospel singers in robes (this gimmick eventually filtered
>back to black musicians, as exemplified best by Robert
>Kelly… but we’ll get back to that later)

Not liking this very much.

>Eventually, the idea of black church singing became just
>another easily replicable “authenticity”-bestowing gimmick
>that could be reduced to a bunch of overdramatic riffs,
>melismas and vibratos.

Not to me.

>The whole “i grew up singing in the Church” became a part of
>the standard credibility card in the utility belt of any
>black soul/R&B singer worth their salt. But i contend that
>it’s a load of bullshit.
>
>I don’t doubt that these singers actually grew up going to
>church, or that they might have even sung in church, but the
>fact is that at this point in time the majority of black
>singers are more influenced by radio/MTV/BET than any kind
>of “pure” church tradition. In other words, they learn to
>sing “black” the same way their authenticity-seeking white
>peers do.

We definitely part ways here. See Fantasia...

>Let’s take Beyonce. Now, i know that she is a devout
>Christian and probably “grew up in the church” (whatever the
>fuck that means nowadays) but i’ve read/watched a grip of
>biographical material on her and i haven’t seen anything
>that indicates the Church played any central role in the
>formation of her musical identity.

Depends on who did the stories. White folks, when they tell our story, normally forget to mention the church. See Ray for an example.