EARLVILLE – On Saturday, the Earlville Opera House welcomes The Campbell Brothers with ‘Sacred Steel,’ their compelling, rich multiplicity of material from the African-American-Pentecostal repertoire with a new twist: the growling, wailing, shouting, singing and swinging voice of the steel guitar, played as you have never heard it played before. This concert is sponsored by WAER FM 88.3.

The Campbell Brothers present what they call ‘Sacred Steel’: African-American gospel music revolving around electric steel guitar and vocals. This form of music originated in the House of God, a Holiness-Pentecostal church founded in 1903 by a Tennessee street preacher named Mary Magdalene Lewis Tate. In the 1930s a number of these churches began using the electric steel guitar to function as the central musical instrument of the religious service, easing congregations through contemplative moments and propelling them to ecstatic celebration at other times.