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ORDER MY STEPS: A FRAMEWORK FOR INTERPRETING NEGRO SPIRITUALS AND GOSPEL MUSIC THROUGH AUTOETHNOGRAPHY AND TESTIMONY
Harley-Emerson, Arreon A.
Harley-Emerson, Arreon A.
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Thesis/Dissertation
Date
2025-08
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Music Education
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https://doi.org/10.34944/dcmk-x319
Abstract
“Order my steps in Your word, dear Lord . . .”
These lyrics, penned and set to music by Glenn Burleigh (1949-2007), are more than a refrain—they are a prayer that is foundational to this dissertation study. As a Black church musician and music education scholar, I live in the space between Sunday’s “Amen” and Monday’s academic expectations. In church, someone might shout, “Make it plain!” and in the academy, a professor might ask for clarity, rigor, and trustworthiness. This dissertation study answered both calls. Through the voice of testimony and in the tradition of Black church storytelling, Order My Steps (this dissertation) introduced and presented an interpretive framework for musically interpreting Negro spirituals and gospel music with cultural validity.
This dissertation used autoethnography and testimony as methods. Autoethnography allowed me to systematically examine my lived experience as both researcher and subject, and to center embodied knowledge as rigorous and credible data. Testimony, drawn from Black sacred traditions, positioned personal narrative as a means of declaring of truth. The stud, delivered in both written and oral form, blended traditional academic approaches with storytelling and testimony captured through video. In so doing, it reflected the very aural-oral traditions it sought to honor. By including video testimonies, this dissertation challenges the idea that the formal, published research literature is the only or highest holder of knowledge or the medium for the dissemination of knowledge.
The central contribution of this work is the DUTY framework. This acronym—Decode the Text, Understand Form and Function, Teach Performance Practice, and Yield Conducting Gesture—developed process for choral practitioners to follow in interpreting Negro spirituals and gospel music. Each element was drawn from my own journey as a conductor, educator, and lifelong member of the Black church. I described how decoding the text reveals layers of meaning rooted in scripture, history, and communal testimony. I explored how understanding form and function contextualizes music liturgically and harmonically. I analyzed how teaching performance practice emphasizes embodied, oral tradition as a site of cultural transmission and learning. And, finally, I asserted that yielding conducting gesture challenges Western norms of control, inviting conductors to surrender to the Spirit and adapt their gestures in service of the music’s meaning and message.
Throughout Order My Steps, I reflected on the tension and harmony between academic rigor and cultural ways knowing and being. Rather than sanitize or neutralize my voice and Blackness, I embraced it. I wrote in first person, engaged directly with the reader-viewer, and let the allusions and contour of Black preaching and speech shape the writing. This was not a rejection of scholarly norms, but a reframing and reclaiming—an assertion that deep analysis and storytelling are not mutually exclusive. I argued that my identities as a Black church musician and academic are not dissonant, but consonant.
This dissertation spoke to a broader need in music education and choral studies: the need for frameworks that honor the communities from which the music originates. Too often, Negro spirituals and gospel music are analyzed and performed in ways that lack cultural grounding. This study offered tools and language to help conductors, educators, and scholars engage this repertoire with deeper understanding and cultural validity. It strove to build a bridge between the choir loft and the classroom—affirming that the sacred knowledge of the Black church belongs in the halls of academia, and that academic frameworks can be in service to, not in opposition to, cultural tradition.
Ultimately, Order My Steps was written as a love offering to those who seek to do justice by this music—not just to sing it, but to feel it, to know it, and to honor the legacy it carries. It intended to expand our minds about what counts as scholarship in music education by showing that testimony, storytelling, and video-based narrative can be rigorous methods of inquiry. It affirms that culturally grounded frameworks like DUTY are essential for interpreting music rooted in lived Black experience.
To the Western-trained musician who has ever wondered how to bridge the Black church and the academy—this is for you. To the Black church musician who never saw themselves reflected in scholarly work—this is for you. And to the next Black scholar-conductor seeking to step into this sacred work—yes, this is sacred work—this dissertation is guide, a story, and a prayer. I hope it helps you find your voice, and that it reminds you: our musics, our methods, and our messages matter.
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