One Ohio man's mission to immortalize a 'sacred instrument'

[irisblue]

Source-https://www.wosu.org/2026-01-02/one-ohio-mans-mission-to-immortalize-a-sacred-instrument

Audio is almost 5 minutes and is at site
snip-"This article was originally published on October 8, 2025.

In a small upstairs room of a Toledo church, Del Ray Grace is preserving a sacred piece of his Pentecostal upbringing. It isn’t an altar or a cross – it’s a steel guitar.

Starting in the 1930s, the instrument became the sound of worship in branches of the Church of the Living God, shaping a gospel tradition known as “sacred steel.”

Grace, a musician and archivist, has played the steel guitar for more than 50 years. In the last decade and a half, he’s built an archive around the music: gathering instruments, honoring standout players and preserving recordings of its electric cry, which bends and wails to the rhythm of the sermon.

Last year, Grace opened the Sacred Steel Music and History Museum, the one of few repositories dedicated to the African American gospel tradition."

More there

[rampartd]

1. pedal steel is an interesting sound

Pedal steel very common in country bands. i did not know the Pentecostal connection. is the movie title
"speaking in tongues of steel?"
might be fun to try that on my little synthesizer. i'm thinking something off manassas or will the circle be unbroken?

[BaronChocula]

2. Today I learned

the modern steel guitar comes from Hawaii.
Also, I was aware of a tradition of the steel guitar in black churches, but I didn't know it was mainly of one branch of one denomination, the Church of the Living God.