If you are tired of ‘shallow worship music’ and appreciate the deepness and richness of the liturgy, then a gospel Mass has much more meaningful, emotional and rich music. The problem is that gospel music is not a tradition in the American Catholic Church, but the music is much more aligned with some Protestant sects, such as Baptists.
It appears to me that the post Vatican II changes have put local liturgies and certainly music, into the hands of the local liturgists and music directors, particularly the latter. Consequently, it also seems to me that music tends to follow the cultural overlay of a given area, or at least it’s trending that way.
True, we are still afflicted by the faux folk songs that got imposed on everyone, largely in the 1970s. However, to the extent music directors depart from that ghastly repertoire (and many do) they tend to either turn to classical works (yes, European, because to the extent there may be, e.g., Japanese “classics” of equal merit, nobody knows about them) or things that have local cultural roots. But fundamentally, the Novus Ordo in most places is a “base paint” to which pigment has to be added from somewhere.
I live in a “southern mountain” area. There is, very obviously to me, a trend toward that music which is part of the local culture. It isn’t entirely so, but we get more and more “southern gospel” and old mountain tunes. I have been to a black parish in St. Louis that in many ways is indistinguishable from non-Catholic black congregations when it comes to music, expression, and so on. Interestingly, there seems to be a sort of “cross-culturalization” going on, as more and more black protestant churches tend to take on “Catholic” vestments, titles of “bishop” in otherwise non-heirarchical congregations, etc. We have a significant number of Hispanics in one of the parishes, and the music for the Spanish Masses is (Mexican) Hispanic all the way. In my diocese there is a Vietnamese seminary. They have an annual event attended by tens of thousands of (mostly) Vietnamese. The Masses at that event are very, very Vietnamese.
Of course, many years ago, the Mass and largely the music, was pretty uniform worldwide. That really did change with Vatican II. Traditional non-liturgical events were very much determined by the local cultures. Because of history, most Catholic arrivals in this country were rather late in its history. Consequently, Church events probably appear “European” to many, depending on where one lives. Cultural things tend to live a good deal longer than most of us expect, so I don’t know that anyone can really say the “lack of black music or traditions” in any given parish is due to any kind of discrimination. I think most parishes simply tend to take on the music and traditions of whatever the biggest ethnic group is in the parish. Interestingly, urban environments tend to concentrate ethnic groups as well.
To the poster who proposed Germany hymns. Not to send you outside the Church, but you can certainly hear them in a Lutheran congregation in my diocese. (Mo Synod) Lutherans tend to retain far more Teutonic ways than do German Catholics.
