Saturday, September 5, 2015

How Christian Rock Charlotte Came To Be

By Daphne Bowen


In the world of rock, one specific sub genre known went from very unpopular to popular over time when fans began to show their support. This sub genre is known as Christian Rock Charlotte and is one of the fastest growing sub genres of this kind of music. Not only has this kind of music grabbed a lot of young and old Christian fans alike, but this type of music has also garnered a lot of fans that are non Christians as well.

Now just to give people a quick background, the church has been very much against rock music in general because they believe that the influence of this genre of music was ritual music performed by the Africans. Of course at that time, most rockstars would sing about sexual themes or even violence during those days which made everything worse. Now during that time, there were some unconventional rockstars that decided to mix the genre up with some gospel lyrics.

Among the first bands to join this bandwagon was none other than the Crusaders. As they were the first to come out into the scene, they were not as widely accepted because of the beliefs of the church during that time. Eventually the band become more well loved by the public and then many other bands soon followed their example.

Although the Crusaders were among the first to spread the genre, it was Larry Norman who was the one who really popularized the sub genre. He was a musician and lyricist who was looked upon by a lot of artists during that time and became one of the core influences of many bands today. It was because of this man that the sub genre was slowly able to seep into the secular music world and became more well known by many.

In the seventies, the scene was dominated by one of the most popular bands in the world known as Stryper. They were a glam metal band that professed about their religion and shouted it out with their glam vocals and spiffy guitar riffs. They quickly gained popularity not only in the religious sectors but also in the secular ones as well as even non Christians started listening to them as well.

In the early eighties, thrash metal became the new big fad with bands like Metallica and Slayer leading the pack. Amidst the rising popularity of the genre, one band emerged as a Christian thrash metal band that was known as Tourniquet. They were so popular and good that they were already considered to be as good as the top thrash metal bands but never reached there because they were not strictly thrash metal.

The nineties saw the emergence of so many more popular bands like Relient K, Skillet, and so many more. This sparked the growth of the sub genre by ten fold. The bands of this genre in fact reached the mainstream market and gained many non Christian fans.

This sub genre is definitely a growing one. The growth can be seen over the time because of the support that was given to the bands that carried the name. In fact, if one would go to Charlotte SC, many more news bands are emerging.




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