Christian Musical
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Through-composed sacred musicals and folk cantatas written for church and youth choirs — pop, folk, and light-rock scores with narration and drama, sold as songbooks and cast LPs — the format that carried guitars and drums into the sanctuary a decade before praise and worship music. The sound is massed youth-choir unison and harmony over folk-pop rhythm sections, with solo features, spoken narration, and singalong anthems built for congregational reprise; individual numbers ("Pass It On", "Freely, Freely", "In Remembrance") escaped their musicals to become standalone church standards. The format's DNA — contemporary instruments, informal register, participatory staging — is documented in CCM histories as a direct forerunner of Jesus music and modern worship.
History
Bob Oldenburg's Good News (1967), premiered by a hundred-voice youth choir at Glorieta Baptist Assembly, launched the Christian folk-musical; Ralph Carmichael and Kurt Kaiser's Tell It Like It Is (1969) sold over 100,000 copies and seeded "Pass It On", and the early-1970s wave — Natural High (1971), Jimmy and Carol Owens' Come Together (1972, recorded on Light with Pat Boone and 2nd Chapter of Acts), Buryl Red and Ragan Courtney's Celebrate Life! (1972), and the Gaithers' Alleluia! A Praise Gathering for Believers (1973) — defined the movement before it receded in the 1980s into the church-choir cantata market; Celebrate Life! marked its 50th anniversary with commemorative performances in 2022, and the works remain in church-choir circulation.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Baptist News Global, "50 years later, Celebrate Life! still is the wind we soar on"
- UMC Discipleship Ministries, "History of Hymns: Pass It On"
- Equip the Called, "We're Gonna Change This Land" (Good News 50th-anniversary oral history)
- Terry W. York, Kurt Kaiser biography coverage, Waco Tribune-Herald