To Be Made an Instrument of Feeling: The Hammond B-3 Organ in the Black Church

Ashon Crawley
Ethnic Studies
UC Riverside

“To Be Made an Instrument of Feeling” is a multi-year research project that explores the various ways the Hammond B-3 organ is used in Black Churches. Though this instrument can be found in many Black Church spaces and it is considered to constitute “the sound” of the Black Church, no critical archive examining its function in Black Sacred Music exists. The author traveled to various sites of primary inquiry and bring together musicians for workshop-style gatherings to explore questions of pedagogy and praxis, to explore concerns about improvisation and spirit. Drawing from his first book project and his own experiences as a Hammond B-3 musician in the Blackpentecostal tradition, “To Be Made an Instrument of Feeling” takes seriously the critical performance practices of virtuosity, sacrality and gathering with others as a means to thinking about how we inhabit the world.