From Infinite World: The Sound of the Hammond Organ and the Tragedy of AIDS in the Black Church

An innovative work that explores the relationship between the Black Church, the Hammond organ, and the musicians that bring it to life.

The Hammond organ has long distinguished the Black Church. Masters of the instrument, often Blackqueer men, invented and advanced gospel music, pioneered new modes of worship, and helped define black life in the twentieth century. But when the AIDS crisis struck, churches vociferously rejected all forms of queerness, even as musicians grew ill, rumors spread, and people died. Drawing on years of experience as a preacher, choir director, and organist, award-winning visual artist and scholar Ashon Thomas Crawley combines personal history and cultural analysis to tell an urgent story about how AIDS fundamentally changed gospel music and the sound of the church.

From Infinite World immerses readers in the history of this pivotal instrument. Crawley profiles its inventor, a white supremacist named Laurens Hammond, and describes the vicious lawsuits fought over the organ’s unique sound. He also introduces little-known but foundational figures in the church and black life, such as Reverend Clarence Cobbs of Chicago and his First Church of Deliverance, where Black Gospel flourished alongside Blackqueer life in fascinating and complex ways. And he explores his own experience as a Blackqueer church musician learning the power of the Hammond organ even as a generation of elders perished in silence.

A major work of scholarship and a deeply vulnerable performance of creative nonfiction, Crawley’s lyrical work offers a captivating new portrait of the Black church as a site of refuge and rejection for Blackqueer genius.

69 illustrations