Nina Öhman

To stream chart-topping songs over the Internet or to listen soul classics played in coffee shops is to hear sonic imprints of many African American women singers who have fashioned gospel vocal idiom and fostered its cross-over to secular music since the mid-20th century. Yet at the same time, firmly rooted in the longstanding, and often subversive religious culture of the Black Church, gospel vocal expression has become a major element in the audible history of the African American quest for social justice. It is against this background that Nina Öhman’s project focuses on gospel music as women-led music and explores the work of many African American women singers whose ideas and creative visions are set to music. Specifically, her project seeks to understand how gospel singers have forged vocal expression as a subversive medium of value. In practice, through ethnography and historical research on leading and local gospel singers in the United States, her project seeks to elucidate values, meanings, and practices surrounding gospel singing in the marketplace. Essentially, Öhman’s work builds upon literature on music and capitalism, gospel music scholarship and popular music studies centering Black women’s experiences in music. She also draws upon anthropological theories of value and exchange. Altogether, by proceeding from the intersect of gender, race, and religion, her project seeks to direct serious attention to the power of singing voice within capitalism.