Singing People Are Happy People: A Brief Look at Convention Gospel Music.

This chapter focuses on convention gospel music and community gospel singing in the U.S. Convention singing relies on newly-published convention books which participants purchase to take home to their own communities. In fact, without the support of the songbook publishers, convention singing could not have achieved its widespread popularity. In the early conventions, quartets demonstrated the musical ideals of harmonic gospel singing. While many quartets were informal family or friendship arrangements, songbook publishers asked the better groups to represent their companies.