Review of "Preaching on Wax: The Phonograph and the Shaping of Modern African American Religion", by Lerone Martin

Published in Brill

An important contribution to the study of religion, media, and culture in America

During the 1920s, savvy American revivalists pioneered evangelical electronic broadcasting by bringing the old-time religion to radio, the latest in communications technology, thereby paving the way for today’s celebrity-driven and heavily commodified media ministries. As Lerone Martin points out in Preaching on Wax, African Americans were largely excluded from early religious radio, due in no small part to the prohibitive cost of home radio sets. Phonographs, however, were more accessible and therefore popular within African American communities, encouraging dozens of entrepreneurial black preachers, in collaboration with established record labels hungry for new revenue streams, to record sermons to shellac discs. Advertised and sold alongside musical “race records,” some of these

titles became hits, bringing fame, wealth, and prestige to their performers.

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