joyce martin sanders biography

Trinity Broadcasting Network is the D.B.A. of Trinity Christian Center of Santa Ana Inc., a California religious non-profit corporation holding 501(C)(3) status with the Internal Revenue Service. Pamela Fox has noted that "while academia has for the most part abandoned the authentic as any kind of meaningful analytic category," the vernacular music of southern, white, rustic life and experience has "tended to preserve it. This period was followed by the mobilization of right-leaning Protestants (and many conservative Catholics) into a political base for the Republican Party in the Reagan Era and a power base for evangelical leaders (including Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, Pat Robertson'sand later Ralph Reed'sChristian Coalition, and, more recently, Donald Wildmon's American Family Association, and Tony Perkins's Family Research Council); and the not-entirely unrelated realignments within conservative and fundamentalist Protestantism wrought by the rise of non-denominational evangelical mega-churches and the Tea Party. Nominated in the "Gospel/Contemporary Christian Music" category, CCM soloist Natalie Grant attended the ceremony, only to leave before the show ended. See Heilbut, "Black Urban Hymnody." Any Arkansas setting becomes synonymous with the Ozark hillbilly. The precipitous decline in "Christian/Gospel" has devastated most sectors of the market. In the early 1990s, two sisters and their brother, Judy, Joyce, and Jonathan, then in their late teens and performing as The Martins, began appearing with the Gaither Homecoming Friends. May 19, 1970) lives in Clive, Iowa with his wife Dara Makohoniuk-Martin and their youngest three of six children, including twin boys, one of which has cerebral palsy. . See Shearon et al., "Gospel Music." tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_8', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_8').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); So it is tempting to assume that the emergence of "southern" to describe the music since the 1960s matters only as an unsubtle substitute for the more racially antagonistic "white." That finally holds who You are. For a recording of the set piece associated with Gerald Wolfe's time with the Dumplin' Valley Boys, see This is Your Life George Younce, directed by Charlie Waller (n.d., Louisville, KY: National Quartet Convention), DVD. See Robert K. Whalen, "Premillennialism,". New York: Knopf, 2012. The Martins recorded five independent albums prior to their breakout. In this context, gospel music functions as a style of vernacular religious entertainment and a form of evangelical cultural experience transcending denominations or confessional traditions. Taylor, Charles. A journal about real and imagined spaces and places of the US South and their global connections. The Martins's performance of pious authenticity plays out in public in ways that take common celebrity narratives (the underdog or, as in the story below, the innocent) and recodes them within the logic of the Arkansas imaginary. His interview enacts a modern gospel version of the venerable Arkansas Traveler colloquy in which a high-born southerner (the Traveler) engages an Arkansas Squatter in a dialogue about the differences of class and geography.60Bill Clinton's presidential campaign used the Traveler name and image as a way to strengthen his populist appeal running against a Washington insider. Even though I do not have a better name for it, I remain deeply ambivalent about "northern urban gospel." It emphasizes the unfolding of God's dealings with humanity in phases or eras ("dispensations"). My sources include celebrity interviews of performers, DVD bonus features, album covers, and online press coverage. She is divorced and has been for some time, but the date of her divorce is not listed. Recording companies experienced similar contractions. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_40', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_40').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); while emphasizing cultural texts and discourses. See full bio . But professional southern gospel has always been strongly grounded its history and identity in the male quartet. My reading sees race, racism, and a racialized concept of self and other in southern gospel as an important, not always dominant, factor in the emergence of "southern gospel" and the cultural function of the music. . Gaither's questions establish Jonathan's lifelong love of "huntin'" as linked to his Arkansas adolescence. Key figures include. See David Fillingim, "A Flight From Liminality: 'Home' in Country and Gospel Music," Studies in Popular Culture 20, no. Consequently, much of conservative Christian culture challenged secular narratives and norms. When she came out, Mark grabbed her arm and said, "You have to hear these kids sing!" tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_36', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_36').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); This retreat from metropolis to outpost acknowledges that southern gospel is no longer a national phenomenon.37 Douglas Harrison, "Slouching Toward Pigeon Forge." Goff, On backwoods virtuosi, see Harrison, "Grace to Catch a Falling Soul. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_44', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_44').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); This performance is important not just because the group's knack for reimagining southern gospel harmonies in dazzling vocal arabesques led in short order to celebrity. These denominations were most frequently represented in original ethnographic research I have conducted into the contemporary culture of southern gospel. From the start, the case of The Martins is linked to the state of their birth. Recreational tourism is a cornerstone of Arkansas's economy and reputation.56For income distributions by state, see "Per Capita Income by State," Bureau of Business and Economic Research. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_30', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_30').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Indeed, the style of four-part male harmony for which professional southern gospel is most well-known has been historically linked to the practice of piety and lived religious devotion in the premillennial dispensationalist tradition.31Premillennial dispensationalism has been the dominant theological paradigm for fundamentalist evangelicals in the United States since the mid-nineteenth century. Yet it is a mistake to treat southern gospel as wholly synonymous with white gospel. Movies. Southern gospel has found itself in alliances with black gospel traditions and the black church. 3,147) where they became a popular regional Christian music act. But so too are there imaginaries rooted in the history, mores, and culture of more particular geographies requiring study to understand their cultural formations and uses. Jennifer Lena has exhorted scholars of music culture to deemphasize sounds and instead examine "social structures and collective actions. 33 Southern gospel product sales The collective effect forms the social imaginary, a way to understand self- and group-concepts in postmodern life.15Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 3. John F. Mooney, review of The Best of The Martins, directed by Bill Gaither, Amazon.com, July 29, 2013, accessed October 15, 2013, http://www.amazon.com/review/R399G8O3TFUQHH/. Fortunately, new and forthcoming work in the study of southern gospel is beginning to scrutinize Gloria Gaither's role as a Christian entrepreneur, thinker, and writer much more closely. "6Not that "southern gospel" never made an appearance before the 1970s and 1980s. Who is martin p joyce? This essay is interested primarily with professional southern gospel, which descends from convention singing but has been distinct from it since the 1930s and 1940s. The Best of the Martins, 2011. Mud, set in the Arkansas Mississippi River Delta, powerfully evokes the fluidity of class, ethnicity, and geography as defining features of identity in a region where the flux of life is so heavily dependent on, shaped by, and intertwined with the flow of the river. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_23', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_23').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Within commercial Christian music, most white fundamentalist fans and professionals left cold by CCMand committed to traditional modes of evangelistic outreachcoalesced around "southern" gospel. Created by: siremidor on 28-March-2013 - Last Edited by admin on 07-January-2016. The music remains popular among white evangelicals and many African American Protestants, though its market sharelike that of most sectors of the music industryhas declined considerably.21Sales of "Christian/Gospel" (which consists overwhelmingly of CCM and black gospel music, but also includes some southern gospel) reached a high point in 1998, totaling $836 million; in 2012, total sales in the same category were $24.2 million. She has two children. After that we did a few Gaither dates, then [we] were signed to Spring Hill Records [a recording company in which Gaither Music had substantial holdings at the time]. Such work is as welcome as it is needed. Joyce Martin was married to Alton G. Martin on October 1, 1983 in Rockwall County, Texas. Joyce Martin Sanders lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband Paul, and she has two children. Such an assumption would not be wholly unjustified.9The conflation of "southern" and "white" to describe this music circulates widely among scholars and non-specialists, but has only been tentatively stated in scholarship. Rather, I aim to map a specific hot spot within the psychosocial terrain of contemporary professional southern gospel as an instance of a broader phenomenon that could be explored in US southern and rural imaginaries. Just as I Am: 30 Favorite Old Time Hymns, was nominated for a 1998 Grammy in the same category. She has two children. Southern Gospel's Decline and the Sister-Bertha-Better-Than-You Effect, The Cultural Consolations of the Hillbilly, Tradition, Progress, and Cultural Instability, Music Album Sales in the United States in 2012, by Genre, The Gospel Church and the Ruining of Gay Lives: An Interview with Anthony Heilbut, Natalie Grant Responds after Leaving Grammys Early, National Quartet Convention Ending Long Run in Louisville, Then Sings My Soul: The Culture of Southern Gospel Music. November 13, 2001, accessed September 23, 2013, http://www.crosswalk.com/1108828/. Sometimes this includes, Sales of "Christian/Gospel" (which consists overwhelmingly of CCM and black gospel music, but also includes some southern gospel) reached a high point in 1998, totaling $836 million; in 2012, total sales in the same category were $24.2 million. The Martins Wiki: Salary, Married, Wedding, Spouse, Family For the film starring Lee Evans, see The Martins (film)The Martins are a Christian music vocal trio composed of three siblings: Joyce Martin Sanders, Jonathan Martin, and Judy Martin Hess. Their mother, Wylma, who also is a gifted singer, served as booster and vocal coach for her three children. EIN: 95-2844062. "39Jennifer Lena, Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 2. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_39', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_39').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); My approach attends to southern gospel as a musical style,40Lower compositional sophistication, more uneven production quality, and rougher cuts by commercial standardsall defining features of the southern gospel sound of the past twenty yearscan function for many evangelicals and fundamentalists as indices of a more real music and catalysts for a more authentic experience of the religious self. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_18', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_18').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); I explore the Arkansas imaginary through the state's most famous southern gospel sibling trio, The Martins, their music, and their reception since approximately 1990.191990 coincides roughly with the emergence of what would become the Bill and Gloria Gaither Homecoming Friends video (later concert) series. The values implied by customs and conditions are elemental in stereotypes of "Arkansas" as hillbilly territory. Kevin Kehrberg generously included me on a panel he organized on shape-note gospel and its half lives in Arkansas and beyond, and Meredith Doster encouraged me to expand the paper into a submission for Southern Spaces. Her reply offers quick-witted banter and comic reinforcement of the widespread assumptionabetted by the Gaither Music Companythat The Martins's southern gospel is an artistically and spiritually serious form of sacred song from people who are proud of their pietistic primitivism. Still, the cultivation and creation of twentieth-century commercial black gospel's golden age (19451960) was largely rooted in Chicago, Philadelphia, and other urban centers in the Midwest and Northeast where many black southerners moved during the Great Migration. The conflation of "southern" and "white" to describe this music circulates widely among scholars and non-specialists, but has only been tentatively stated in scholarship. My use of "evangelical" follows George Marsden's, denoting Protestant thought and action shaped by Reformed theology. Blevins, Brooks. Toward the end of his life, Andy Griffith recorded multiple southern gospel albums. For a recording of the set piece associated with Gerald Wolfe's time with the Dumplin' Valley Boys, see. In the final decades of the twentieth century, these disagreements opened up a fault line between southern gospel and CCM, with each camp pursuing styles of music that implied divergent theories of musical evangelism. Joyce Martin Sanders Overview Tracks Albums Photos Similar Artists Events Biography More Biography We don't have a wiki for this artist. Its fans and participants aspire to transcend or dissolve regional expectations, theological boundaries, and denominational classifications. Media releases promoting The Martins tout this diversity and eclecticism. No Sympathy For the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism. The popularity of Homecoming derives from its emergence duringand its response tothe declension crisis in southern gospel. "2Ibid., 2. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_2', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_2').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); This tradition is distinctive for its cultivation of close harmony sung in ensemblestraditionally male quartets, a formation that dominated the commercial sector of southern gospel through roughly the first half of the twentieth century, and more recently, mixed-gender foursomes and trios, often comprising family members.3Today's professional southern gospel includes many family and mixed gender foursomes and trios, configurations that were and are common in the singing convention world that dominated southern gospel in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. (Jennifer Jones, "Natalie Grant Responds after Leaving Grammys Early," Christianitytoday.com, January 29, 2014, accessed January 31, 2014, http://www.christiantoday.com/article/mass.wedding.at. The overwhelming majority of fans and professionals in contemporary southern gospel are white Christians who are "culturally southern, socially conservative, and Anglo-American. Though the publication of "He Leadeth Me" predates the popularization of the term of "gospel hymns" (which is most commonly sourced to Philip P. Bliss's, While David Fillingim argues that "home" as a concept in southern gospel allows its participants to imagine and explore a flight from material hardship and social marginalization in this world (in favor of an eternal home of magnificence in heaven), my research suggests that in southern gospel "home" serves to give concrete, graspable shape to abstract theological concepts and spiritual experiences for ordinary Christians in the here and now. Similarly, Gerald Wolfe, also originally a pianist for the Cathedral Quartet and subsequently the owner and emcee of his own professional trio, Greater Vision, was famously plucked from obscurity (or so the story went onstage in his early years as a performer) while singing with the Dumplin' Valley Boys.49References to Bennett's birthplace in Strawberry, Arkansas, were staples of Cathedrals concerts, several of which I attended, in the 1980s and 1990s. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_48', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_48').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); What continues to distinguish The Martins is their acoustic style full of complex harmonies, modulations, and voicings that reflect influences of country, bluegrass, folk, old-time, choral, black gospel, and vocal jazz styles and arrangements. These congregations structured worship, congregational culture, and church outreach to target "those who had never established a relationship with Christ and the Church, and those trying to reconnect" (Lester Ruth, "Lex Agendi, Lex Orandi: Toward an Understanding of Seeker Services as a New Kind of Liturgy," Worship 70, no. Judy Martin Hess (b. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_33', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_33').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Southern gospel product sales also experienced what now appears to be a last-gasp micro-surge of popularity, with market shares reaching an inflection point somewhere in the mid1990s, followed by a precipitous sales decline by as much as 90 percent in the decade between 2000 and 2010.34Goff's remains the most extensive and influential account of southern gospel's market decline. "Mom and Dad both instilled that in us that if you had a talent to sing, you should get up. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_5', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_5').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Among these people, "the term southern gospel," as I have noted elsewhere, "was not used to describe the music [in its professional, commercialized form] until the 1970s and did not gain widespread use until the 1980s. Teaching, learning, and singing gospel to fashion a meaningful identity shares in the reconstitutive ambitions of the New South movement more generally.29For a cogent analysis of how shape-note gospel from the South mediated cultural conflicts and status instabilities of white, southern farmers, see Gavin James Campbell, "'Old Can Be Used Instead of New': Shape Note Singing and the Crisis of Modernity in the South, 18801920," Journal of American Folklore 110, no. Photograph by Judy Baxter. More deeply, southern gospel functioned as a figurative space of cultural retrenchment against the music's loss of reputational capital within white evangelical popular culture.24For more on southern gospel's shift within Christian entertainment from a "dominant" to a "residual" status, see Harrison, Then Sings My Soul, 103109. Home News Random Article Install Wikiwand Send a suggestion Uninstall Wikiwand Our magic isn't perfect Clearly this story of The Martins's beginning as Homecoming Friends is important to them because they are depicted in the narrative as so natively talented that Bill Gaither purportedly allows them to perform without ever having himself auditioned them. Copyright 2023 TBN - Trinity Broadcasting Network. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_3', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_3').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); The seven-shape notational system (and culture) of songwriting, singing, and music education that took root in the southern uplands in the late 1800s has heavily influenced the music of southern gospel and its values.4Here, following Loyal Jones, "Southern Uplands" designates the regions and people of trans-Appalachia and extends eastward into the Piedmont and westward to the Ozarks. She is divorced and has been for some time, but the date of her divorce is not listed. At one point in the interview with The Martins, Gaither describes their music as "sophisticated," and Judy Martin Hess jokes that Gaither was not saying The Martins themselves are sophisticated, only their music. "Gospel," as Heilbut has noted, is "the favored term for what working-class black congregations [do,] often to the exclusion to white traditions." Bill Clinton's presidential campaign used the Traveler name and image as a way to strengthen his populist appeal running against a Washington insider. Taylor's development of the social imaginary builds on (but also departs from) Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 2006). Anthony Heilbut, "Black Urban Hymnody," on, Stephen Shearon, Harry Eskew, James C. Downey, and Robert Darden, "Gospel Music,". Is Joyce Martin. This essay is interested in how the imagining of a place shapes and is shaped by understandings of vernacular sacred music and the shifting identities this music contains. For more on Gaither Homecomings and their role and appeal in southern gospel and beyond, see ibid., 110136. She has Angelman Syndrome and is the happiest girl you will ever meet. ", References to Bennett's birthplace in Strawberry, Arkansas, were staples of Cathedrals concerts, several of which I attended, in the 1980s and 1990s. . "Andy Griffith Dies." They live in Columbus, Georgia, and have five children. Since at least the late 1970s, southern gospel's fortunes, measured by market standards, have trended downward, a decline attributed to broader trends within commercial Christian music entertainment and more broadly within fundamentalist and evangelical Protestantism.As the fortunes of southern gospel have declined, those of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) have risen. Gaither's remark associates a universality to The Martins, who are legitimated by the origins their music is purported to transcend. He was very busy and was getting ready for the next day's video. Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 5. Lower compositional sophistication, more uneven production quality, and rougher cuts by commercial standardsall defining features of the southern gospel sound of the past twenty yearscan function for many evangelicals and fundamentalists as indices of a more real music and catalysts for a more authentic experience of the religious self. Comparatively little has been published about The Martins's biography beyond birth, marriages, and professional accomplishments.41The basic details provided here derive largely from The Martins's disclosures on stage, press coverage, conservations I have had with industry professionals, and my experience. My focus on professional southern gospel music is distinct from the avocational or amateur tradition, known as convention singing. "Place" signifies a physical location, a material culture, a set of affiliated social relations, and more nebulous meanings associated with place as a concept. Most fundamentalists and many conservative evangelicals believe this return will be presaged by certain historical events, including cataclysmic conflict between Arabs and Jews in the Holy Land, the rise of Anti-Christ, and the emergence of a one-world order. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Updated: June 20, 2015 Biography ID: 102744141 See Robert K. Whalen, "Premillennialism," The Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements, ed. The Arkansas imaginary explored here is not a totalizing way of understanding the vernacular music of white fundamentalists. Joyce Martin Sanders lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband Paul, and she has two children. From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_50', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_50').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); southern gospel audiences have historically bonded with performers who come to fame through place-based narratives of discovery. The southern gospel tradition carries on primarily through the cultivation of a musical sensibility connected to an underlying set of cultural affiliations. In the broadest sense, The Martins here evince how "the interaction of lyrics, music, and religious experience in southern gospel functions as a way for evangelicals to cultivate the social tools and emotional intelligence necessary for modern living." These longstanding conflicts precede the twentieth century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. I have in mind the period in American conservative and fundamentalist evangelicalism inaugurated by Richard Nixon's conjuring of the ", 1990 coincides roughly with the emergence of what would become the, Within southern gospel, "CCM" designates nearly all other forms of commercial Christian music deemed insufficiently pious or overly commercialized (marketed in ways different from southern gospel). The videos still air regularly on many local-access religious television channels, but sales today are largely driven through merchandizing at concerts, the Gaither, "Gospel hymns" refer to a repertoire of American sacred songs that "first appeared in religious revivals during the 1850s, but which flourished with the urban revivalism that arose in the English-speaking world in the last third of the nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth century." The siblings have been making music together since she was 10 and she has penned many of their hit songs through the years. Claiming a home in southern gospel grounds The Martins in an imagined identity that they in turn hold out for fans seeking models of stability and reassurance in an extended moment of great cultural change and instability for white evangelical fundamentalist religious culture. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_47', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_47').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Yet The Martins remain beloved members of the Homecoming cast and reputational avatars of gospel traditionalism carried on in the music of a new generation of songbirds. For more on cultural-geographic conceptualizations of place, see John Agnew, The United States in the World Economy: A Regional Geography (London: Cambridge University Press, 1987), and Cresswell, Place. "Gospel," as Heilbut has noted, is "the favored term for what working-class black congregations [do,] often to the exclusion to white traditions." "17On "lived religion," see David D. Hall, Lived Religion: Toward a History of Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 321. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_43', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_43').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); The Martins first appeared in 1993 on an early Gaither Homecoming video, Precious Memories. In its resurgence, one hears from the gospel stage and in other acts of self-representation an intensification of emphasis on social resentment and cultural grievance. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_31', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_31').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); It is in this tradition of pietistic, blood-bought, soul-saving, life-giving harmony of the one true way to Christ that The Martins were raised and trained.32For more on The Martins's biography, see the following section and note 41. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_32', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_32').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Their success in the late 1980s and early 1990s coincided with the resurgence of cultural separatism that has come to dominate southern gospel discourse.33This element of cultural separatism has reemerged in the past generation within southern gospel. Molly Worthen has mapped contemporary evangelicalism's uneasy relationship with post-modernity and religious self concept. The interplay of praxis and imagination is crucial. Unlike "northern urban" gospel (a phrase with no currency outside academe), it is the preferred way to self-identify within the culture and the most widely recognized way to describe the music to outsiders. Joyce Martin Sanders Weight Loss In essence, we are an agricultural area. Judy Martin Hess lives in Columbus, Georgia with her husband Jake Hess Jr, and their four children. At face value, much of The Martins's stylistically hybridized and contemporary music would seem to commit many of the very musical sins that southern gospel culture has long cited as justification for disparaging most other major forms of Christian music entertainment (except, perhaps, bluegrass).47The history and role of bluegrass, old-time, and mountain musics, particularly songs with pietistic lyrics that have found a home in southern gospel, is understudied. "61Anthony Harkins, Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 7. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_61', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_61').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Yet many of the white, conservative, and fundamentalist Christian consumers who are the target audience for this kind of Christian entertainment merchandise may well see something quite different. county assessor property search, another word for failing to do something,