Gospel music was a type of Black American religious music that started in the late nineteenth century, inspired by negro spirituals, work songs and white Pentecostal hymns (Robinson-Martin, 2009). Robinson-Martin (2009) claimed that composers such as Charles Tindley, Lucie Campbell, and Dr. Isaac Watts were the main instigators of the movement from slave songs to gospel music in the twentieth century, where they took traditional songs and adapted them with African-American traits, including flatted notes, altered rhythms and pentatonic scales. A key component of gospel music and “black vocal style” is the extensive use of melisma. Originally a trait in chant music from as early as the 12th century, the type of melisma exhibited within gospel music contained a lot more vibrato. Dr Ray Allen characterised gospel as incorporating “melismatic moans of the spiritual” (Allen, 1987, p.9). As most music of American black origin stems from the negro spirituals of the late 19th century, gospel is just one extension of its collective techniques. A number of scholars (Williams-Jones, 1975; Allen, 1987; Burnim, 1980) believe gospel music to have majorly contributed to, or been distinctly categorised by, the black/African-American culture. The style and spirit, for instance, containing examples of melodic improvisation in the form of melismas, melodic alterations, improvised humming and moaning (Robinson-Martin, 2009)