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‘Play the Rain Down’: Prince, Paul Morton, and the Idea of Black Ecstasy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2022

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Abstract

This article grapples with ‘Let It Rain’, the title track of Bishop Paul S. Morton and the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship's 2003 release, which revises Michael Farren's contemporary Christian ballad by braiding it together with Prince's ‘Purple Rain’ and the formal logic of Black gospel tradition. As the Full Gospel version of this song commingles these seemingly discordant components, Morton, choir, and band turn a sung prayer into an assertion of interworldly presence. Building on its received musical materials, this gospel power ballad performs the Black gospel tradition's characteristic inflection – an arresting turn from one level of musicking to a heightened, ecstatic frame. In so doing, this song brings rain near, illuminating the links between performances of musical ecstasy and musical Blackness.

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Article
Information
Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 93 - 116
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Alex Cowan for preparing the transcriptions in this article.

References

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