Entry · catalog no. 1306
praise break
/ /ˈpɹeɪz ˌbɹeɪk/ /PRAYZ brayk
noun · Black Pentecostal and Holiness churches — Church of God in Christ first, now Baptist and non-denominational congregations too · 2000s
✓ Verified
1.
The up-tempo, band-driven passage in a service during which the congregation shouts — meaning danced praise, not raised voices. Usually triggered off the peak of a sermon, a testimony, or a song's vamp, and carried by a fast cyclical Hammond organ figure over drums.
“The vamp came back around a third time and the whole left side of the church went into a praise break.”
2.
By extension, any sudden outbreak of that kind of praise, in or out of a church building.
“They had a praise break in the parking lot when the verdict came down.”
Origin & Attribution
The practice is old and the name is new, and conflating them is the standard error. What a praise break describes runs back through early twentieth-century Holiness and Pentecostal worship in the Azusa Street lineage to the nineteenth-century ring shout — Southern in root, nationalized by the Great Migration, given its modern sound by mid-century Hammond organ gospel ensembles. The phrase praise break, though, is congregational vernacular that appears to be much younger than the thing it names. The award-winning scholarship on precisely this music does not use it: Braxton Shelley's work calls it the vamp and the shout. The older and better-documented vernacular names are shout and shouting music, alongside getting your shout on, having church, and doing the holy dance. Note also that shout here means dancing. A reader who takes it as vocal shouting has the entry backwards.
1906
Azusa Street-lineage Holiness and Pentecostal worship establishes the practice, under other names
2009
Earliest dated attestations of the phrase the archive could verify — a gospel-house release titled "Praise Break" and a Black-church essay pairing praise break with shout as synonyms
2010s
The phrase goes national through live gospel recordings and viral church video
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Black Pentecostal and Holiness churches — Church of God in Christ first, now Baptist and non-denominational congregations too · 2000s
Spoken by
Black Pentecostal, Holiness, and Baptist congregations; musicians who have to play it and ushers who have to catch people
$PRAISEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising17 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
63/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2009
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Joshua Lawrence Lazard — "This Is Why Folks Don't Take Church Seriously Pt. II: The Shout or Praise Breaks," Uppity Negro Network — essay · 25 May 2009
A dated, insider-authored Black-church text that runs shout and praise break side by side as the same thing
■
Terrence Parker — "Praise Break" — digital release · 2009
A dated, catalogued use of the phrase as a title in gospel-house
■
+ Cite a sourceGlenn Hinson — Fire in My Bones: Transcendence and the Holy Spirit in African American Gospel — book, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press · 2000
Documents the practice in detail, under other names
See also