Praise God with any genre of music

titled “Hip-hop gospel deserves recognition”, which was urging for more acceptance of hip-hop music in church.
Sometime ago I had my own article titled “Reggae preaches the gospel”, which also attracted interesting feedback from one reader Thulani Makuyana, who said that a genre called Christian reggae is non-existent adding that proponents of this genre are mere greedy artistes.
“I am a strong reggae fan and have been so for a very long time. I don’t believe there is anything called Christian reggae. Reggae is classified as roots, lover’s rock and conscious and lately dancehall.
“This genre you are talking about doesn’t exist. It’s a ploy by self proclaimed artistes to invent what has been existing for a long time. These artistes just use the word of God otherwise there is nothing like Christian reggae because reggae has always preached the bible among social issues” said Thulani Makuyana
Having looked at these responses, it became clear to me that the subject of musical genres in gospel music is debatable among consumers of gospel music.
While there may be no doubt that the Bible does not mention anything about genres of music, I believe that any debate about gospel music should rotate around the Bible. Hence from the Bible we find different verses which show how early Christians used different musical instruments for worship in the temple of God.
To start with, gospel music should praise and bring honour to God. Psalms 150 verse 6 urges all creatures of God to praise him while Ephesians 5 verse 19 urges worshipping God through music.
“Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord” Ephesians 5 verse 19 King James Version.
Other verses urge Christians to praise God with a joyful noise and gladness through music.
“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing” Psalms 100 verse 1 and 2 King James Version
Musical instruments which include percussion instruments, bells, horns, castanets, cymbals, tumbrels, harps, gongs and many others were used to produce different melodious sounds and when combined with psalms, produced music that praised God.
In other instances the same instruments of music were used for pagan worship such as in the book of Daniel 3 verse 5 where people were required to worship an idol by King Nebuchadnezzar after the sound of music.
Hence music was used in the temple to worship God and in other cases used for idol worship. Sometimes music would be used to bring comfort to someone who would be perplexed as seen in the book of 1 Samuel 16 where Daniel played his harp to King Saul when he was troubled.
Genres of music are not mentioned in the Bible and thus cannot be used for qualifying Gospel music as biblical.
Although Christians should be selective in their choice of music, any genre can be used in conveying the word of God to different classes of people.
A dig into the history of genres of music reveals how musical genres such as reggae, jazz, rock, RnB, rhumba and many others were invented by secular musicians for worldly entertainment.
According to Wikipedia, hip-hop began in West African and African American, where names such as DJ Kool Herc, Coke La Rock and Jalal Mansur Nuriddin are listed among the pioneers of this genre.
Other genres of music have different historical backgrounds while their proponents have been linked with different forms of criminal behaviour such as Snoop Dog, DMX and many others.
In my view since hip-hop and other genres of music have a good following among consumers of music around the world, they would be good carriers for the word of God.
It is on this basis that gospel artistes should be able to preach the gospel creatively using any genre of music to reach different classes of people.