In the Break, In the Black, In the Beginning: The Praise Break, Capitalist Time, and the Genesis of Black Communal Endurance

Capitalist time logics emergent in “run-of-show” worship formats deform congregants away from God's unrestrained inhabitation. The praise break, conversely, as a dynamic sonic grammar operating through plural temporalities, breaks these time logics. Drawing on Moten's account of Black aesthetic practice's capacity to exceed dominant epistemologies, the paper argues that the run-of-show format operates within the logic of re-lease while the praise break enacts release. Re-reading the telos of Paul’s theology of worship in 1st Corinthians as love against ‘decency and order’, this paper suggests that the praise break re-instantiates the creative conditions of genesis in a world that forecloses Black bodies into capitalist time. From the ring shout to the praise house, the praise break emerges from communities enduring together, maintaining fidelity to a God who has maintained fidelity to them across antiblack time. Here the community clears and God quickens – in the break, in the black, in the beginning.