Reviewed by Tony Cummings

It's an intriguing anomaly that the first ever encyclopaedia of contemporary Christian music should be written in Dutch! Hans Loeve who may be known to a few CCM connoisseurs for his Reli Pop Encyclopedia, the first ever attempt to compile a discography of CCM, has now compiled this 600 page tome coming up with a biography and album discography on just about every CCM artist who's ever made it onto CD! Add to that producers, session musicians, record labels, art editors and (even) magazines (yep. Cross Rhythms is there!) and you have an amazing piece of work. My Dutch speaking buddy Jan Willem Vink kindly gave me translations of some selected pages and they seemed a tad high on opinion to fit comfortably the conventions of reference works, while the fact that the amazing Mr Loeve has tried to put in so many entries means that some are very incomplete (to take one example, no mention of the fact that Rose Banks was once a member of Sly And The Family Stone and had a hit R&B single as Little Sister). There's little southern gospel listed. And it seems a mistake to have done entries on one or two pre-war gospel artists like the Fisk Jubilee Singers and Blind Willie Johnson) unless Loeve was prepared to open the work for hundreds more. But these are quibbles. Hans Loeve and Boekencentrum have between them produced an invaluable reference work on an undocumented field of music.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

Interested in reviewing music? Find out more here.