Spirituals

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Spiritual (song)
)

Spirituals (also known as Negro spirituals, African American spirituals,

work songs, and plantation songs that evolved into the blues and gospel songs in church.[6] In the nineteenth century, the word "spirituals" referred to all these subcategories of folk songs.[7][8][9] While they were often rooted in biblical stories, they also described the extreme hardships endured by African Americans who were enslaved from the 17th century until the 1860s, the emancipation altering mainly the nature (but not continuation) of slavery for many.[10] Many new derivative music genres such as the blues emerged from the spirituals songcraft.[11]

Prior to the end of the

US Civil War and emancipation, spirituals were originally an oral tradition passed from one slave generation to the next. Biblical stories were memorized then translated into song. Following emancipation, the lyrics of spirituals were published in printed form. Ensembles such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers
—established in 1871—popularized spirituals, bringing them to a wider, even international, audience.

At first, major recording studios were only recording white musicians performing spirituals and their derivatives. That changed with Mamie Smith's commercial success in 1920.[12] Starting in the 1920s, the commercial recording industry increased the audience for the spirituals and their derivatives.

Black composers,

R. Nathaniel Dett, created a "new repertoire for the concert stage" by applying their Western classical education to the spirituals.[13] While the spirituals were created by a "circumscribed community of people in bondage", over time they became known as the first "signature" music of the United States.[14]

Terminology

Oxford Music Online, as a "type of sacred song created by and for African Americans that originated in oral tradition. Although its exact provenance is unknown, spirituals were identifiable as a genre by the early 19th century."[3]
They used the term without the descriptor, "African American".

The term "negro spirituals" is a 19th century word "used for songs with religious texts created by African Enslaved in America".[7] The first published book of slave songs referred to them as "spirituals".[16]

In musicology and ethnomusicology in the 1990s, the single term "spirituals" is used to describe "The Spirituals Project".[17]

The US Library of Congress uses the phrase "African American Spirituals", for the numbered and itemized entry.[18] In the introductory phrase, the singular form is used without the adjective "African American." Throughout the encyclopedic entry the singular and plural form of the term, is used without the "African American" descriptor. The LOC introductory sentence says, "A spiritual is a type of religious folksong that is most closely associated with the enslavement of African people in the American South. The songs proliferated in the last few decades of the eighteenth century leading up to the abolishment of legalized slavery in the 1860s. The African American spiritual (also called the Negro Spiritual) constitutes one of the largest and most significant forms of American folksong."[18]

Context

The transatlantic slave trade is described by a United Nations report as the largest forced migration in recorded human history.[5] An estimated 90% of transatlantic African Enslaved were captured by other Africans and sold to Europeans.[19] Millions more remained enslaved in Africa, where slavery was a complex and deeply-rooted part of culture going back centuries before widespread European presence on the continent.[20][21][22][23][24][25]

From 1501 through 1867, approximately "12.5 million Africans" from "almost every country with an Atlantic coastline" were kidnapped and coerced into slavery, according to the 2015 Atlas based on about 35,000 slaving voyages.

Islamic slave trade enslaved similar numbers of Africans, with between 8 million and 17 million individuals taken from Africa between the 8th and 19th centuries along the Trans-Saharan trade routes.[27][28][29][30][31]

The

US Civil War
in 1865.

The domestic slave trade that emerged after the United States Congress outlawed the international slave trade in 1808, and lasted until the U.S. Civil War, destroyed generations of African American families.[26] Slavery in the United States differed from the institution in other regions of the Americas, such as the West Indies, Dutch Guiana and Brazil. In the U.S., the enslaved had higher rates of survival and thus there was a "high and sustained natural increase in the slave population for a more than a century and a half—with numbers nearly tripling by the end of the domestic slave trade in the 1860s." During that period, "approximately 1.2 million men, women, and children, the vast majority of whom were born in America," were displaced—spouses were separated from one another, and parents were separated from their children.[26] By 1850, most enslaved African Americans were "third-, fourth-, or fifth-generation Americans."[26] In the 1800s, the majority of enslaved people in the British West Indies and Brazil had been born in Africa, whereas in the United States, they were "generations removed from Africa."[26]

Overview

Engraving of Douglass from his 1845 narrative

In his 1845

W.E.B. Du Bois in his 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folk .[40][41]

Hansonia Caldwell, the author of African American music, spirituals: the fundamental communal music of Black Americans [42] and African American music: a chronology : 1619–1995,[43] said that spirituals "sustained Africans when they were enslaved."[6] She described them as "code songs" that "would announce meetings, as in "Steal Away", and describe the path for running away, as in "Follow the Drinkin' Gourd". "Go Down Moses" referred to Harriet Tubman – that was her nickname—so that when they heard that song, they knew she was coming to the area...I often call the spiritual an omnibus term, because there are lots of different [subcategories] under it. They used to sing songs as they worked in the fields. In the church, it evolved into the gospel song. In the fields, it became the blues."[6] Hansonia Caldwell, who was a professor of music at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) from 1972 to 2011, also oversaw an Archive of Sacred Music at CSUDH—an extensive collection of music, books, periodicals, documents, audio & visual materials, and oral histories."[6]

"The African American spiritual (also called the Negro Spiritual) constitutes one of the largest and most significant forms of American folksong," according to a Library of Congress 2016 article.[44][45]

Spirituals were originally oral, but by 1867 the first compilation, entitled "Slave Songbook", was published.[16] In the book's preface, one of the co-compilers, William Francis Allen, traced the "development of Negro Spirituals and cultural connections to Africa."[46] The 1867 publication included spirituals that were well-known and regularly sung in American churches but whose origins in plantations, had not been acknowledged.[16] Allen wrote that, it was almost impossible to convey the spirituals in print because of the inimitable quality of African American voices with its "intonations and delicate variations", where not "even one singer" can be "reproduced on paper". Allen described the complexity of songs such as "I can't stay behind, my Lord", or "Turn, sinner, turn O!" which have a "complicated shout" where there are no singing parts, and no two singers "appear to be singing the same thing." The lead "singer starts the words of each verse, often improvising, and the others, who "base" him, as it is called, strike in with the refrain, or even join in the solo, when the words are familiar."[16][47]

Portrait of James Weldon Johnson in 1932

In their 1925 book, The Books of American Negro Spirituals, James Weldon Johnson and Grace Nail Johnson said that spirituals, which are "purely and solely the creation" of African Americans, represent "America's only type of folk music...When it came to the use of words, the maker of the song was struggling as best he could under his limitations in language and, perhaps, also under a misconstruction or misapprehension of the facts in his source of material, generally the Bible."[2] The couple were active during the Harlem Renaissance James Weldon Johnson was the leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Arthur C. Jones, a Professor in the Musicology, Ethnomusicology and Theory Department at the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver, founded "The Spirituals Project" to preserve and revitalize the "music and teachings of the sacred folk songs called spirituals," "created and first sung by African Americans in slavery".[17] Spirituals were created by a "circumscribed community of people in bondage", over time they became known as the first "signature" music of the United States.[14] Forbidden to speak their native languages, they generally converted to Christianity. With narrow vocabularies, they used the words they did know to translate biblical information and facts from their other sources into song.[2]

Cultural origins

African foundation

J.H. Kwabena Nketia (1921–2019) described by the New York Times in 2019, as a "pre-eminent scholar of African music",[48] said in 1973 that there is an important, interdependent, dynamic, and "unbroken conceptual relationship between African and African American music".[11]: 7–15 [49]

Enslaved African Americans "in the plantation South drew on native rhythms and their African heritage."[50] According to a May 2012 PBS interview, "spirituals were religious folks songs, often rooted in biblical stories, woven together, sung, and passed along from one slave generation to another".[51][Notes 1][Notes 2][Notes 3]

According to Walter Pitt's 1996 book, spirituals are a musical form that is indigenous and specific to the religious experience African slaves and their descendants in the United States. Pitts said that they were a result of the interaction of music and religion from Africa with music and religion of European origin.[52]: 74 

In a May 2012 PBS interview, Uzee Brown, Jr. said that spirituals were the "survival tools for the African slave".[51] Brown said that while other similarly-oppressed cultures were "virtually wiped out", the African slave survived because of spirituals by "singing through many of their problems", by creating their own "way of communicating".[51] Enslaved people introduced a number of new instruments to America: the bones, body percussion, and an instrument variously called the bania, banju, or banjar, a precursor to the banjo but without frets.[51] They brought with them from Africa long-standing religious traditions that highlighted the importance of storytelling.[53][54]

Evidence of the vital role African music has played in the creation of African American spirituals exists, among other elements, in the use of "complex rhythms" and "polyrhythms" from West Africa.[11]: 7–15 

Religion in everyday life

According to the beliefs of slave religion—the "material and the spiritual are part of an intrinsic unity".[55] Music, religion, and everyday life are inseparable in the spirituals, and through them, religious ideals were infused into the activities of everyday life.[55]: 372  The spirituals provided some immunity protecting the African American religion from being colonized, and in this way preserved the "sacred as a potential space of resistance".[55]: 372  A 2015 article in the Journal of Black Studies said that it was not surprising therefore that "spirituals were sung primarily as rowing songs, field songs, work songs, and social songs, rather than exclusively within the church."[55]: 372  The article described how, "through the use of metonymy (substituting associated words to ostensibly alter the semantic content), spirituals acted as a form of religious education, able to speak simultaneously of material and spiritual freedom", for example in the spiritual, "Steal Away to Jesus".[55]: 372 

In William Eleazar Barton's (1899–1972) Old Plantation Hymns, the author wrote that African American "hymns seldom make allusion to the Bible as a source of inspiration. They prefer "heart religion" to "book religion". Barton, who attended services with African Americans, said that they did not sing the "ordinary" hymns that strengthened "assurance by a promise of God in Holy Scripture"; rather, in the African-American hymns, they appeal to a more personal "revelation from the Lord." He cites the examples of "We're Some of the Praying People" and a hymn from Alabama—"Wear a starry crown". He also notes that both these songs have a "threefold repetition and a concluding line." : 16  In the latter, we find the "familiar swing and syncopation" of the African American.[56]

Spirituals were not simply different versions of hymns or Bible stories, but rather a creative altering of the material; new melodies and music, refashioned text, and stylistic differences helped to set apart the music as distinctly African-American.[57][58]

The

Methodist preachers converted African Americans, including those who were enslaved. In some communities African Americans were accepted into Christian communities as deacons.[60] From 1800 to 1825 enslaved people were exposed to the religious music of camp meetings on the ever-expanding frontier.[9] As African religious traditions declined in America in the 18th and 19th centuries, more African Americans began to convert to Christianity.[61] In a 1982 "scathing critique" of Awakening scholars, Yale University historian, Jon Butler, wrote that the Awakening was a myth that has been constructed by historians in the 18th century who had attempted to use the narrative of the Awakening for their own "religious purposes".[62]

Biblical themes

By the 17th century, enslaved Africans were familiar with Christian biblical stories, such as the story of Moses and Daniel, seeing their own stories reflected in them. An Africanized form of Christianity evolved in the slave population with African American spirituals providing a way to "express the community's new faith, as well as its sorrows and hopes."[44]

As Africans were exposed to stories from the Bible, they began to see parallels to their own experiences. The story of the exile of the Jews and their captivity in Babylon, resonated with their own captivity.[59]

The lyrics of Christian spirituals reference symbolic aspects of Biblical images such as

Michael Row the Boat Ashore". There is also a duality in the lyrics of spirituals. They communicated many Christian ideals while also communicating the hardship that was a result of being an enslaved.[63]
The river Jordan in traditional African American religious song became a symbolic borderland not only between this world and the next. It could also symbolize travel to the north and freedom or could signify a proverbial border from the status of slavery to living free.[64]

Syncopation, or ragged time, was a natural part of spiritual music. Songs were played on African-inspired instruments.[65]

Collections of lyrics of the spirituals

African-American spirituals have associations with plantation songs, slave songs, freedom songs, and songs of the Underground Railway, and were oral until the end of the

US Civil War. Following the Civil War and emancipation, there has been "extensive collection and preservation of spirituals as folk song tradition". The first collection of Negro spirituals was published in 1867, two years after the war had ended. Entitled Slave Songs of the United States, it was compiled by three northern abolitionists—Charles Pickard Ware (1840–1921), Lucy McKim Garrison (1842–1877), William Francis Allen (1830–1889)[16][66][Notes 4] The 1867 compilation built on the entire collection of Charles P. Ware, who had mainly collected songs at Coffin's Point, St. Helena Island, South Carolina, home to the African-American Gullah people originally from West Africa. Most of the 1867 book consisted of songs gathered directly from African Americans.[16] By the 1830s at least, "plantation songs", "genuine slave songs", and "Negro melodies", had become extraordinarily popular. Eventually, "spurious imitations" for more "sentimental tastes" were created. The authors noted that "Long time ago", "Near the lake where drooped the willow", and "Way down in Raccoon Hollow" were borrowed from African-American songs.[16] There had been a renewed interest in these songs through the Port Royal Experiment (1861 - ), where newly-freed African American plantation workers successfully took over operation of Port Royal Island plantations in 1861, where they had formerly been enslaved. Northern abolitionist missionaries, educators and doctors came to oversee Port Royal's development. The authors noted that, by 1867, the "first seven spirituals in this collection" were "regularly sung at church".[16]

In 1869, Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who commanded the first African-American regiment of the Civil War, the 1st South Carolina Volunteers—"recruited, trained, and stationed at Beaufort, South Carolina" from 1862 to 1863.[67] Higginson admired the former slaves in his regiment saying, "It was their demeanor under arms that shamed the nation into recognizing them as men." He mingled with the soldiers and in published his 1869 memoir Army Life in a Black Regiment in which he included the lyrics of selected spirituals.[68][69] During the Civil War, Higginson wrote down some of the spirituals he heard in camp. "Almost all their songs were thoroughly religious in their tone, ...and were in a minor key, both as to words and music."[68][70]

Starting in 1871, the Fisk Jubilee Singers began touring, creating more interest in the "spirituals as concert repertory". By 1872, the Jubilee Singers were publishing their own books of songs, which included "The Gospel Train".

Reverend Alexander Reid had attended a Fisk Jubilee Singers' performance in 1871, and suggested they add several songs to their repertoire. Reid, who had been a superintendent at the Spencerville Academy in Oklahoma in Choctaw Nation territory in the 1850s, had heard two workers enslaved by the Choctaw people, —an African-American couple—Wallace Willis and his wife Minerva—singing "their favorite plantation songs" from their cabin door in the evenings. They had learned the songs in "Mississippi in their early youth."[71] Reid provided the Jubilee Singers with the lyrics of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", Roll, Jordan, Roll, "The Angels are Coming", "I'm a Rolling", and "Steal Away To Jesus", and others that Willis and his wife had sung.[71] The Jubilee Singers popularized Willis' songs.

Popularization

Fisk Jubilee Singers popularized spirituals

Fisk Jubilee Singers, 1875

The original Fisk Jubilee Singers, a touring a cappella male and female choir of nine students of the newly established Fisk school in Nashville, Tennessee who were active from 1871 to 1878, popularized Negro spirituals.[72] The name "jubilee" referred to the "year of jubilee" in the Old Testament—a time of the emancipation of slaves. On January 9, 1866, shortly after the end of the American Civil War (1861 to May 9, 1865), the American Missionary Association founded the Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, the historically black college. As a school-fundraiser, the Fisk Jubilee Singers had their first tour on what is now called Jubilee Day—October 6, 1871.[72] The first audiences were small, local, and skeptical, but by 1872, they performed at Boston's World Peace Festival and at the White House, and in 1873 they toured Europe.[72]

In their early days, the Jubilee Singers did not sing the slave songs. Sheppard—who also composed and arranged music—explained how slave songs, like those published in the 1867 Slave Songs, had not initially been part of the Singers' repertoire because the songs, "were sacred to our parents, who used them in their religious worship and shouted over them." Shephard said that, "It was only after many months that gradually our hearts were opened to the influence of these friends and we began to appreciate the wonderful beauty and power of our songs." Eventually their repertoire began to include these songs.[16][73]

By 1878 the Singers had disbanded.[72] In 1890 the Singers legacy was revived when Ella Sheppard, Moore—one of the original nine Fisk Jubilee Singers—returned to Fisk and began to coach new jubilee vocalists, including John Wesley Work Jr. (1871–1925).[74]: 253  In 1899, Fisk University president E. M. Cravath put out a call for a mixed (male and female) jubilee singers ensemble that would tour on behalf of the university.[74]: 253  The full mixed choir became too expensive to tour, and was replaced by John Work II's male quartet. The quartet received "widespread acclaim" and eventually made a series of best-selling recordings for Victor in December 1909, February 1911, for Edison in December 1911, for Columbia is October 1915 and February 1916, and Starr in 1916.[74]: 253  John Work Jr.—also known as John Work II—spent three decades at Fisk University, collecting and promulgating the "jubilee songcraft" of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers and in 1901 he co-published co-published New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers with his brother, Frederick J. Work.[75][76][72]

From 1890 through 1919, "African Americans made significant contributions to the recording industry in its formative years", with recordings by the Fisk Jubilee Singers and others.[77]

Hampton Singers

In 1873, the Hampton Singers formed a group in Hampton, Virginia at what is now known as Hampton University. They were the first ensemble to "rival the Jubilee Singers". With Robert Nathaniel Dett (1882–1943) as conductor until 1933, Hampton Singers "earned an international following."[45]

Tuskegee Institute Quartet

The first formal a capella Tuskegee Quartet was organized in 1884 by Booker T. Washington, who was also the founder of the Tuskegee Institute. Since 1881, Washington had insisted that everyone attending their weekly religious services should join in singing African American spirituals. The Quartet was formed to "promote the interest of Tuskegee Institute". In 1909 a new quartet was formed. The singers travelled intermittently until the 1940s.[78] Like the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the Tuskegee Institute Singers sang spirituals in a modified harmonized style.

The concert spiritual tradition

African American composers—

R. Nathaniel Dett, and William Dawson, created a "new repertoire for the concert stage" by applying their Western classical education to the spirituals.[13] They brought spirituals to concert settings and mentored the next generation of professional spirituals musicians starting in the early 20th century.[79]

Harry T. Burleigh
, 1936

Harry Burleigh's (1866–1949)—an African-American classical composer and baritone performed in many concert settings published Jubilee Songs of the United States in 1929, which made "spirituals available to solo concert singers as art songs for the first time".[80]: 102  Burleigh arranged spirituals with a classical form. He was also a baritone, who performed in many concert settings. He introduced classically trained artists, such as Antonín Dvořák to African-American spirituals.[81] Some believe that Dvorak was inspired by the spirituals in his Symphony From the New World.[65] He coached African-American soloists, such as Marian Anderson,[82] as solo classical singers. Others, such as Roland Hayes and Paul Robeson continued his legacy.[57]: 284 [80]

Burleigh published Jubilee Songs of the United States in 1929, which made "spirituals available to solo concert singers as art songs for the first time".[80]: 102 

Robert Nathaniel Dett in the 1920s

R. Nathaniel Dett (1882–1943) is known for his arrangements that incorporated the music and spirit of European Romantic composers with African-American spirituals.[83] In 1918, he said, "We have this wonderful store of folk music—the melodies of an enslaved people" but it will be of no value if it is not used. We must treat spirituals "in such manner that it can be presented in choral form, in lyric and operatic works, in concertos and suites and salon music".[58]: 280  R. Nathaniel Dett was a mentor to Edward Boatner (1898–1981), an African American composer who wrote many popular concert arrangements of the spirituals.[58][80] Boatner and Willa A. Townsend published Spirituals triumphant old and new in 1927.[84] Boatner "maintained the importance of authenticity regarding the collection and transcription of spirituals, but also clearly identified with the new, stylized and polished ways in which they were arranged and performed".[80]
: 102 

musicologist, is known, among other accomplishments, for the world premiere by the Philadelphia Orchestra of his 1934 Negro Folk Symphony which was revised with added African rhythms in 1952 following Dawson's trip to West Africa. One of his most popular spirituals is "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel".[85][86]

Spirituals in contemporary life

The Fisk Jubilee Singers continue to maintain their popularity in the 21st century with live performances in locations such as

Grand Ole Opry House in 2019 in Nashville, Tennessee.[87] In 2019 Tazewell Thompson presented an cappella musical entitled Jubilee, which is a tribute to the Fisk Jubilee Singers.[88]

Spirituals remain a mainstay particularly in small black churches, often Baptist or Pentecostal, in the deep South.[89]

The latter half of the 20th century saw a resurgence of the spiritual. This trend was impacted strongly by composers and musical directors such as Moses Hogan and Brazeal Dennard.

Arthur Jones founded "The Spirituals Project" at the University of Denver in 1999 to help keep alive the message and meaning of the songs that had moved from the fields of the South to the concert halls of the North.[89]

Everett McCorvey founded The American Spiritual Ensemble[90] in 1995, a group of about two dozen professional singers who tour performing spirituals in the United States and abroad. The group has produced several CDs, including "The Spirituals",[91] and is the focus of a public broadcasting documentary.[92]

Stylistic origins and qualities

Qualities of the spirituals include mastery of the blending of voices, timing, and intonation.[51]

Spirituals were originally unaccompanied monophonic songs. The tempo in some songs may be slowed down at times—ritardando—as in the case of "sorrow songs" and/or to showcase the "beauty and blending of the voices".[74]

Along with the "solo call and unison response", songs may include "overlapping layers, and spine-tingling falsetto humming."[74]

Stylistic origins include

work songs, field holler,.[93] Historian Jonathan Curiel also noted possible influences from Islamic music.[94] According to a McGraw Hill publication for grade school, "Spirituals were sung as lullabies and play songs. Some spirituals were adapted as work songs.[59]

Black spirituals "use of microtonally flatted notes, syncopation and counter-rhythms marked by handclapping in black spiritual performances."[45] It "stands out for the singers' striking vocal timbre that features shouting, exclamations of the word "Glory!" and raspy and shrill falsetto tones".[45]

Numerous rhythmical and sonic elements of spirituals can be traced to African sources, including prominent use of the pentatonic scale (the black keys on the piano).[95]

In his 1954 book Studies in African Music, Arthur Morris Jones (1889–1980), a missionary and ethnomusicologist, said that in African music, the "complex interweaving of contrasting rhythmic patterns" was central to African music, just as harmonies were valued in European music. Jones described the drum is the highest expression of rhythms, but they can also be produced through hand-clapping, stick-beating, rattles, and the "pounding of pestles in a mortar".[96]: 26 [Notes 5][97]

Over time "formal concert tradition has evolved,"[91] which included the work of the Hampton Singers under composer R. Nathaniel Dett.[45]

In the 20th century, composers, such as Moses Hogan, Roland Carter, Jester Hairston, Brazeal Dennard and Wendell Whalum transformed the "cappella arrangements of spirituals for choruses" beyond its "traditional folk song roots".[45]

Call and response

University of Denver professor, Arthur Jones, who established "The Spirituals Project in 1998, out of the university's Lamont School of Music, described how coded words could be introduced in the call and response overlap, which only insiders aware of the encrypted message could understand.[8]: 51, 55  [98] He described "already existing spirituals" were employed "clandestinely" as one of the many ways people used in their "multilayered struggle for freedom."[8]: 51, 55 [91]

Sorrow songs

Slave songs were called "Sorrow Songs" by

W.E.B. Du Bois in his book, 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folk.[40][41] Sorrow songs are spirituals, such as, "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child", and "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen"—songs that are intense and melancholic—are sung at a slower pace.[45]

Jubilee songs

The Fisk Jubilee Singers had been so successful that other groups were created to perform similar music.[99] Over time the term "jubilee" was used to refer to other ensembles who sang the original group's repertoire.[99] In the early 1900s jubilee singers also referred to singers who performed gospel music, and hymns as well as spirituals.[99] Examples of these early nineteenth century groups include the Norfolk Jubilee Quartet, the Utica Jubilee Singers, and the Tuskegee Institute Singers.[99]

Jubilee songs, also known as "camp meeting songs," such as and "Fare Ye Well" and "Rocky my soul in the bosom of Abraham" are fast-paced, "rhythmic and often syncopated".[45] Spiritual songs which looked forward to a time of future happiness, or deliverance from tribulation, were often known as 'jubilees.[citation needed]

In some churches, such as the Pentecostal church in the 1910s and 1920s in New Orleans, there was no organ or choir and music was louder, more exuberant and included up tempo spirituals called "jubilees". They "used the drum, the cymbal, the tambourine, and the steel triangle. Everybody in there sang, and they clapped and stomped their feet, and sang with their whole bodies. They had a beat, a rhythm we held on to from slavery days, and their music was so strong and expressive."[100]: 52–53 

Freedom songs

Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist and a former slave said that slave songs awakened him to the dehumanizing character of slavery, "The mere recurrence, even now, afflicts my spirit, and while I am writing these lines, my tears are falling. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conceptions of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds.[101]

In a 2017 PBS Newshour, segment entitled "Singing in Slavery: Songs of Survival, Songs of Freedom" said that, while it is "has not been proven, it is believed"—that "

bloodhounds—used by the slavers—from following their trail.[102][8][103][104]
: 18 

Jones described how during the years of the Underground Railroad "already existing spirituals" were employed "clandestinely" as one of the many ways people used in their "multilayered struggle for freedom."[8]: 51, 55  He described how coded words could be introduced in the call and response overlap, which only insiders aware of the encrypted message.[8]: 51, 55 

A collaborative production by

Follow the Drinking Gourd".[108] James Kelley in his 2008 article said that there is a lack of corroborating sources to prove that there is a coded message in "Follow the Drinking Gourd".[109][110][111]

One 1953 article by Sterling Brown said that there are scholars who "believe that when the Negro sang of freedom, he meant only what the whites meant, namely freedom from sin."[112] Brown said that, to an enslaved person freedom would also mean freedom from slavery.[112] When the enslaved person sings, "I been rebuked, I been scorned; done had a hard time sho's you bawn," he is not only referring to freedom from sin but from physical bondage.[112] Brown cited Douglass, saying that Canaan stood for Canada; and "over and beyond hidden satire the songs also were grapevines for communications. Harriet Tubman, herself called the Moses of her people, has told us that "Go Down Moses" was tabu in the slave states, but the people sang it nonetheless."[112]

A 2016 Library of Congress article said that

protest songs, such as, Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" and Billy Bragg's "Sing their souls back home'" were based on African American spirituals, and that became the musical backdrop of the call for democracy around the globe.[45] Many of the freedom songs, such as "Oh, Freedom!" and "Eyes on the Prize," that defined the Civil rights movement (1954–1968) were adapted from some of the early African American spirituals. Some such as, "We Shall Overcome," combined the gospel hymn "I'll Overcome Someday" with the spiritual "I'll Be all right."[45][113][114]

Work songs

In the 1927 anthology, The American Songbag, compiled by Carl Sandburg (1878–1967), the American poet and folklorist, he wrote that "Ain' go'n' to study war no mo'" was an example of a spiritual that African Americans used as work songs. He said, that, "As the singers go on, hour by hour, they bring in lines from many other spirituals. The tempo is vital. Never actually monotonous. Never ecstatic, yet steady in its onflow, sure of its pulses. It is a work song-spiritual. War is pronounced "wah" or "waw" as if to rhyme with "saw." Horse is "hawss." And so on with Negro economy of vocables in speech and song."[115]: 480–481 

Field hollers

African American music in general.[93]

Derivatives

Blues and gospel music are derivatives of African American spirituals.

The blues

In the early 1960s, Blues People by Amiri Baraka—the chosen name for LeRoi Jones (1934–2014)—provided a history of African Americans through their music, beginning with the spirituals to the blues.[116][117] By 1967, Jones had become the main spokesperson for African American intellectuals, displacing James Baldwin, according to a 1965 review of Blues People.[118]

The blues form originated in the 1860s in the Deep SouthSouth Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas—states that were most dependent on the slave labor on planations and that held the largest number of enslaved people.[119] The form was collectively developed by generations and communities of enslaved African Americans starting as "unaccompanied work-songs of the plantation culture".[120] The historical roots of the blues have been traced farther back to West African sources by scholars such as Paul Oliver[121] and Gerhard Kubik[122]—with elements such as the "responsorial 'leader-and-chorus' form".[120][123]: 10–13  The blues became the "most extensively recorded of all traditional music types" and since the "early 1960s, —the "most important single influence on the development of Western popular music,"[120] and are now widespread.[124]: 131 [Notes 6]

Mamie Smith

When Mamie Smith's August 10, 1920, Okeh recording of the composer Perry Bradford's (1893–1970) New York City Crazy Blues became a commercial success, it opened the commercial record market for music for an African American audience.[12][125][126] Prior to the success of this recording, commercial recording companies featured non-African American musicians playing African-American music.[127]: 343–345  Bradford's African-American band, the Jazz Hounds, "played live, improvised", "unpredicatable", "breakneck" music that was a "refreshing contrast to the buttoned-up versions of the blues interpreted by white artists across the 1910s".[12]

A 1976 book, Stomping the Blues by Albert Murray, said that this interaction between Christianity and African-American spirituals occurred only in the United States. Africans who converted to Christianity in other parts of the world, even in the Caribbean and Latin America, did not evolve this particular form.[128]

Gospel songs

Sacred music includes both spirituals and gospel music, which "originated in the black church and has become a globally recognized genre of popular music. In its earliest manifestations, gospel music functioned as an integral religious and ceremonial practice during worship services. Now, gospel music is also marketed commercially and draws on contemporary, secular sounds while still conveying spiritual and religious ideas."[9]

Well-known gospel singer Mahalia Jackson (1911–1972) was one of Gospel music's most prominent defenders. She said that, "Blues are the songs of despair. Gospel songs are the songs of hope. When you sing gospel you have a feeling there's a cure for what's wrong. When you're through with the blues you've got nothing to rest on."[100]: 52  Horace Clarence Boyer traced the emergence of Gospel music as a "discrete musical style" to the Deep South in 1906 in Pentecostal churches. Through the Great Migration of African American from the south to the north, especially in the 1930s, gospel songs entered the "mainstream of American popular culture". Gospel music had its heyday from 1945 to 1955—the "Golden Age of Gospel."[129]

Gospel Quartets, like the Golden Jubilee Quartet and the Golden Gate Quartet, changed the style of spirituals with their innovative, jubilee style which included new harmonies, syncopation with sophisticated arrangements.[99] An example of their music was their performance of "Oh, Jonah!"[45][130] The Golden Gate Quartet—who were active from 1934 to the late 1940s—performed in the concert From Spirituals to Swing at Carnegie Hall in the late 1930s.[99] Zora Neale Hurston, in her 1938 book The Sanctified Church, criticized what she called "Glee Club style" of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Tuskegee Institute Quartet, and Hampton Singers in the 1930s. She said they were using a style" that was "full of musicians' tricks" that were not authentic to their roots in the original African American spirituals. The authentic spirituals could only be found in the "unfashionable Negro church".[131]

White spirituals

In his 1938 book, White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands, Vanderbilt University's George Pullen Jackson in Nashville drew attention to the existence of a white spiritual genre which differed in many aspects from African American spirituals.[45] The core of Jackson's argument, however, supported by many musical examples, is that African-American spirituals draw heavily on textual and melodic elements found in white hymns and spiritual songs. Jackson extended the term "spirituals" to a wider range of folk hymnody but this does not appear to have been widespread usage previously. The term, however, has often been broadened to include subsequent arrangements into more standard European-American hymnodic styles, and to include post-emancipation songs with stylistic similarities to the original African American spirituals.

Possible Islamic influences

The historian

Islamic world of the Maghreb since the seventh and eighth centuries."[94][132] There was particularly a significant trans-Saharan cross-fertilization between the musical traditions of the Maghreb and the Sahel.[132]

There was a difference in the music performed by the predominantly Muslim

Sahelian slaves and the predominantly non-Muslim slaves from coastal West Africa and Central Africa. The Sahelian Muslim slaves generally favored wind and string instruments and solo singing, whereas the non-Muslim slaves generally favored drums and group chants. Plantation owners who feared revolt outlawed drums and group chants, but allowed the Sahelian slaves to continue singing and playing their wind and string instruments, which the plantation owners found less threatening.[132] According to Curiel stringed instruments these string instruments may have the precursor to the banjo.[94] While many were pressured to convert to Christianity, the Sahelian slaves were allowed to maintain their musical traditions, adapting their skills to instruments such as the fiddle and guitar. Some were also allowed to perform at balls for slave-holders, allowing the migration of their music across the Deep South.[132]

See also

Notable songs

These

notable
spirituals were written or widely adopted by African Americans:

Notes

  1. Atlanta, Georgia
  2. ^ Spirituals originated with the enslaved Africans who were brought to British North America and the United States in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery was not abolished in the U.S. until 1865 through the enactment of the Thirteen Amendment when all enslaved people were legally emancipated. See History of slavery in the United States.
  3. ^ According to a Library of Congress 2016 article, music was central to and permeated every aspect of everyday life and major life events in Africa. Enslaved Africans in America were no longer permitted to worship as Christian colonialists feared "African-infused way of worship". Gatherings had to be conducted in a clandestine manner. During these meetings, worshipers would sing, chant, dance and sometimes enter ecstatic trances. Along with spirituals, shouts also emerged in the Praise Houses. Shouts begin slowly with the shuffling of feet and clapping of hands (but the feet never cross because that was seen as dancing, which was forbidden within the church). Drums were used as they had been in Africa, for communication. When the connection between drumming, communication, and resistance was eventually made, drums were forbidden.
  4. ^ Part I of the collection included songs from the South-Eastern Slave States, including South Carolina, Georgia and the Sea Islands. Of these Charles Pickard Ware collecting songs from the Gullah people of Port Royal Islands, South Carolina. These songs including "Roll, Jordan, Roll", "Jehovah, hallelujah, "I hear from heaven to-day", "Blow your trumpet", "Gabriel", "Praise, member", "Wrestle on, Jacob", "The lonesome valley", "I can't stay behind", "Poor Rosy", "The trouble of the world", "There's a meeting here tonight", "Hold your light", "Happy morning", "No man can hinder me", "Lord, remember me", "Not weary yet", "Religion so sweet", "Hunting for the Lord", "Go in the wilderness", "Tell my Jesus" "Morning", "The graveyard, "John, John, of the holy order", "I saw the beam in my sister's eye", "Hunting for a city", "Gwine follow", Lay this body down", "Heaven bell a ring", "Jine 'em", "Rain fall and wet Becca Lawton", "Bound to go", "Michael row the boat ashore", "Sail, o believer", "Rock o' jubilee", "Stars begin to fall", "King Emanuel", "Satan's camp a-fire", "Give up the world", "Jesus on the water-side", "I wish I been dere", "Build a house in paradise", "I know when I'm going home", "I'm a-trouble in de mind", and "Travel on". William Francis Allen collected these songs on Port Royal Islands: "Archangel open the door", "My body rock 'long fever", "Bell da ring", "Pray all de member", "Turn, sinner, turn o'", "My army cross over", "Join the angel band", "I an' Satan had a race" ROUD # 11993, "Shall I die?", "When we do meet again", "The white marble stone", "I can't stand the fire", "Meet, o Lord", "Wait, Mr. Mackright", "Early in the morning", "Hail Mary", "No more rain fall for wet you", "I want to go home", "Good-bye brother", "Fare ye well", "Many thousand go", "Brother Moses gone", "The sin-sick soul", "Some valiant soldier", "Hallelu, hallelu", "Children do linger", "Good-bye", "Lord, make me more patient", "The day of judgement", "The resurrection morn", "Nobody knows the trouble I've had", "Who is on the Lord's side", "Hold out to the end", "Come go with me", "Every hour in the day", "In the mansions above", "Shout on, children", "Jesus, won't you come by-and-bye!", and "Heave away". Part II included songs from the Northern Seaboard Slave States, including Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, such as "Wake up, Jacob", "On to glory", "Just new", "Shock along, John", "Round the corn, Sally", "Jordan's mills", "Sabbath has no end", "I don't feel weary", "The hypocrite and the concubine", "O shout away", "O'er the crossing", "Rock o' my soul", "We will march through the valley", "What a trying time", "Almost over", "Don't be weary, traveller", "Let God's saints come in", "The golden altar", "The winter", and "The heaven bells". Part III includes songs from the Inland Slave States, including Tennessee, Arkansas, and the Mississippi River, such as "The gold band", The good old way", I'm going home", Sinner won't die no more", "Brother, guide me home", "Little children, then won't you be glad?", "Charleston gals", "Run, n*, run", "I'm gwine to Alabamy". Part IV includes songs from the Gulf States, including Florida and Louisiana: Miscellaneous: "My father, how long?", "I'm in trouble", "O Daniel", "O brothers, don't get weary", "I want to join the band", "Jacob's ladder", "Pray on", "Good news, member", "I want to die like-a Lazarus die", "Away down in Sunbury", "This is the trouble of the world", "Lean on the Lord's side", "There are all my father's children", "The old ship of Zion", "Come along, Moses", "The social band", "God got plenty o' room", "You must be pure and holy", "Belle Layotte", "Remon", "Caroline", "Calinda", "Lolotte", and "Musieu Bainjo."
  5. ^ A.M. Jones' (1889–1980) experience was in Zambia during the early 1900s. He was a missionary and musicologist.
  6. sharecroppers
    , which seem to have been directly responsible for the characteristic vocal style of the blues."

Footnotes

  1. ^ "African American Spirituals". Library of Congress.
  2. ^ a b c Johnson, James Weldon; Johnson, J. Rosamond (2009). The Books of American Negro Spirituals. Da Capo Press. pp. 13, 17 – via Google Scholar. The Negro Spirituals are purely and solely the creation of the American Negro..." "When it came to the use of words, the maker of the song was struggling as best he could under his limitations in language and, perhaps, also under a misconstruction or misapprehension of the facts in his source of material, generally the Bible." "...this music which is America's only folk music...Full text
  3. ^ . Retrieved February 28, 2021.
  4. ^ . Retrieved February 27, 2021. Between 1501 and 1867, the transatlantic slave trade claimed an estimated 12.5 million Africans and involved almost every country with an Atlantic coastline." This 2015 publication provides an atlas of this "350-year history of kidnapping and coercion". The Atlas, which is based on an online database (www.slavevoyages.org) "with records on nearly 35,000 slaving voyages—roughly 80 percent of all such voyages ever made" and has "nearly 200 maps...that explore every detail of the African slave traffic to the New World.
  5. ^ a b "Background on Remember Slavery: Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade". United Nations. International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (March 25). Retrieved February 27, 2021. The transatlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration in history, and undeniably one of the most inhumane. The extensive exodus of Africans spread to many areas of the world over a 400-year period and was unprecedented in the annals of recorded human history. As a direct result of the transatlantic slave trade, the greatest movement of Africans was to the Americas — with 96 per cent of the captives from the African coasts arriving on cramped slave ships at ports in South America and the Caribbean Islands. From 1501 to 1830, four Africans crossed the Atlantic for every one European, making the demographics of the Americas in that era more of an extension of the African diaspora than a European one. The legacy of this migration is still evident today, with large populations of people of African descent living throughout the Americas.
  6. ^ a b c d "Hansonia Caldwell: 'Living Legend' Presents Final Spiritual Concert". California State University, Dominguez Hills News. May 2, 2011. Retrieved February 28, 2021.
  7. ^ a b Evans, Arthur L. (1972). The Development of the Negro Spiritual as Choral Art Music by Afro-American Composers: With an Annotated Guide to the Performance of Selected Spirituals. University of Miami.
  8. ^ .
  9. ^ a b c "Celebrating Black Music Month". National Museum of African American History and Culture. June 29, 2012. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Sacred music, which includes spirituals and gospel music, illustrates the central role that music plays in African American spiritual and religious life. The earliest form of black musical expression in America, spirituals were based on Christian psalms and hymns and were merged with African music styles and secular American music forms. Spirituals were originally an oral tradition and imparted Christian values while also defining the hardships of slavery.
  10. JSTOR 467516
    – via JSTOR.
  11. ^ .
  12. ^ . Retrieved March 1, 2021.
  13. ^ a b "Wade In The Water". African American Composers and The Concert Spiritual Tradition. Episode 8. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
  14. ^ a b "Sweet Chariot: the story of the spirituals". The Spirituals Project. Archived from the original on July 25, 2015. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
  15. ^ Hitchcock, H. Wiley; Stanley, Sadie (1986). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan.
  16. ^ a b c d e f g h i Charles Pickard Ware; Lucy McKim Garrison; William Francis Allen (1867). Slave Songs of the United States. Book from the collections of University of Michigan. New York: A. Simpson & Co.
  17. ^ a b "The Spirituals Project". University of Denver Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences. Retrieved February 23, 2021.
  18. ^ a b "African American Spirituals", Library of Congress, Washington, DC
  19. ^ Gates Jr., Henry Louis (April 23, 2010). "Ending the Slavery Blame-Game". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 16, 2023. Retrieved March 26, 2012.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  20. JSTOR 2901390
    .
  21. .
  22. ^ "In various places in Africa, where human sacrifice was connected with ancestor worship, some of the slaves of the deceased were buried alive with him, or they were killed and laid beneath him in his grave. The Dahomey instituted especially elaborate sacrifices at yearly ceremonies related to the cult of deceased kings.""Human Sacrifice". Encyclopædia Britannica. August 26, 2019.
  23. ^ a b c d e "Historical Context: Facts about the Slave Trade and Slavery". The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Retrieved February 27, 2021.
  24. ^ Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, "Traite", in Encyclopædia Universalis (2002), corpus 22, page 902.
  25. ^ Ralph Austen, African Economic History (1987)
  26. ^ Ronald Segal, quoted in Ronald Segal's Islam's Black Slaves
  27. ^ Adam Hochschild (March 4, 2001). "Human Cargo". New York Times. Retrieved December 20, 2012.
  28. ^ Rawley, James A.; Behrendt, Stephen D. (December 2005). The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History. p. 63. ISBN 0-8032-0512-0.
  29. JSTOR 23622193
    .
  30. . Retrieved February 27, 2021.
  31. . Retrieved February 27, 2021.
  32. .
  33. . Retrieved February 27, 2021.
  34. ^ Opala, Joseph A. "The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection". The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. Retrieved February 27, 2021.
  35. ^ Frederick Douglass (1844). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
  36. ^ a b "Sorrow Songs", American Passages: A Literary Survey, Annenberg Learner. Retrieved September 9, 2019.
  37. ^
    S2CID 155920736
    .
  38. .
  39. .
  40. ^ a b "Spirituals". Library of Congress. The Library of Congress Celebrates the Songs of America. Washington, D.C. July 1, 2016. Retrieved February 25, 2021.
  41. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "African American Spirituals". Library of Congress. Washington, D.C. July 1, 2016. Retrieved February 25, 2021.
  42. ^ blackhistorywalksundefined (Director) (November 17, 2013). Slave Songbook: Origin of the negro Spiritual. Event occurs at 17:40. Retrieved February 24, 2021.
  43. ^ "The Negro Spiritual". The Spirituals Database. April 2, 2015. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
  44. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved February 26, 2021.
  45. .
  46. ^ "Morehouse College Glee Club: History". Retrieved November 1, 2010.
  47. ^ a b c d e Faw, Bob (May 4, 2012). "African-American Spirituals". Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. PBS. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  48. .
  49. ^ Abernethy, Bob (August 26, 2005). "African-American Spirituals". Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. PBS. Retrieved February 25, 2021.
  50. ^ "African-American Religion". National Humanities Center. Getting Back To You - Divining America: Religion in American History. Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. October 2000. Retrieved February 25, 2021.
  51. ^
    S2CID 146488455
    . Retrieved February 28, 2021.
  52. ^ Barton, William Eleazar (1899). Old Plantation Hymns: A Collection of Hitherto Unpublished Melodies of the Slave and the Freeman, with Historical and Descriptive Notes. New York: AMS Press.
  53. ^ .
  54. ^
  55. ^ a b c "African American Spirituals". spotlightonmusic.macmillanmh.com. Spotlight on music. McGraw Hill. Archived from the original on March 15, 2015. Retrieved March 11, 2015. A connectED program for Grades 1–8.
  56. .
  57. .
  58. .
  59. ^ "History". Retrieved February 15, 2010.
  60. ^ Smith-Christopher, Daniel L., "River Jordan in Early African American Spirituals", National Endowment for the Humanities, Bible Odyssey
  61. ^ a b Pershey, Monica Gordon. "African American spiritual music: A historical perspective", The Dragon Lode, Vol. 18, No. 2, Spring 2000.
  62. ^ Allen, William Francis; Ware, Charles Pickard; Garrison, Lucy McKim; Schlein, Irving (1965), Slave songs of the United States; the complete original collection (136 songs), New York: Oak Publications
  63. ^ Andrews, Barry (March 24, 2015). "Thomas Wentworth Higginson". Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biographies (UUDB). Retrieved February 28, 2021.
  64. ^ a b Higginson, Thomas Wentworth (June 1867). "Negro Spirituals". The Atlantic.
  65. . Retrieved March 3, 2008.
  66. ^ Bauch, Marc A. (2013). Extending the Canon: Thomas Wentworth Higginson and African-American Spirituals. Munich, Germany.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  67. ^ .
  68. ^ a b c d e "Our History". Fisk Jubilee Singers. 2006. Archived from the original on March 21, 2007. Retrieved February 23, 2021.
  69. ^ Robbins, Hollis; Gates, Henry Louis Jr., eds. (2017). Portable Nineteenth Century African American Women Writers. Penguin. p. 230.
  70. ^
    S2CID 190735108
    . Retrieved February 23, 2021.
  71. .
  72. ^ "John Wesley Work Papers". Emory Libraries MARBL. Archived from the original on June 11, 2010. Retrieved February 23, 2021.
  73. .
  74. ^ "Choir History". Tuskegee University. Retrieved February 25, 2021.
  75. ^ Performing Arts Encyclopedia also houses a special digitized American choral music collection which features arrangements of spirituals by composers like Henry T. Burleigh and R. Nathaniel Dett.
  76. ^ a b c d e Glover, Gisele (1998), "The Life and Career of Edward Boatner and an Inventory of the Boatner Papers at the Schomburg Center" (PDF), American Music Research Center (AMRC), retrieved February 25, 2021
  77. ^ Snyder, Jean E. (1993). "A great and noble school of music: Dvořák, Harry T. Burleigh, and the African American Spiritual". In Tibbetts, John C. (ed.). Dvořák in America: 1892–1895. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press. p. 131.
  78. ^ This spiritual, "Go Down Moses" sung by Marian Anderson in 1924 was taken from an arrangement to Burleigh."Go Down Moses"
  79. .
  80. ^ Boatner, Edward; Townsend, Willa A (1927), Spirituals triumphant old and new, Nashville, Tenn.: Sunday School Pub. Board
  81. .
  82. ^ Dawson, William Levi (July 24, 2006). "William Levi Dawson papers, 1903–1990". findingaids.library.emory.edu.
  83. ^ Barbershop Harmony Society (Director) (May 3, 2019). Fisk Jubilee Singers - Wade In the Water. Event occurs at 3:45. Retrieved February 23, 2021.
  84. ^ Pressley, Nelson (May 20, 2019). "'Jubilee' makes a star of the chorus at Arena Stage". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 23, 2021.
  85. ^ a b "African American Spirituals (unable to access title, author, date, live url)". The Salt Lake Tribune.
  86. ^ "ASE". American Spiritual Ensemble.
  87. ^ a b c "African American Spirituals". Singers: Primarily a capela. Retrieved February 25, 2021.www.singers.com
  88. ^ "KET Documentaries | American Spiritual Ensemble | KET". October 19, 2023 – via video.ket.org.
  89. ^ .
  90. ^ a b c d e Curiel, Jonathan (August 15, 2004). "Muslim Roots of the Blues". SFGate. San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on September 5, 2005. Retrieved August 24, 2005.
  91. ^ Henry, Richard. "Pentatonic Scales In Popular Music And Spirituals". Culture and the Pentatonic Scale. World Wide Jazz. pp. 6–8. Retrieved January 26, 2021.
  92. OCLC 6977345
    .
  93. ^ Squinobal, Jason John (2009). West African music in the music of Art Blakey, Yusef Lateef, and Randy Weston (PDF). University of Pittsburgh (Thesis). PhD in Ethnomusicology. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
  94. ^ Stephanie Wolf (Director), Arthur Jones. "The Spirituals Project And The Deep Meaning Of Slave-Era Songs". Radio Dances. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
  95. ^ a b c d e f Ginell, Cary. "Golden Gate Quartet: Gospel Train (1937–1942)". Thousand Oaks, California. Retrieved February 25, 2021.
  96. ^ .
  97. ^ Frederick Douglass (1855). "My Bondage and My Freedom". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved June 6, 2013.
  98. ^ a b Berry, Kenyatta D. (January 27, 2017). "Singing in Slavery: Songs of Survival, Songs of Freedom". PBS NewsHour. Retrieved February 23, 2021.
  99. .
  100. ^ Kashatus, William C. (2002). Just over the Line: Chester County and the Underground Railroad. Chester County Historical Society.
  101. Maryland Historical Society and Maryland State Archives
  102. ^ Ponomarenko, John (2001). "Understanding pages: coded". Soul Review. Jersey. Archived from the original on July 24, 2008. Retrieved August 8, 2008.
  103. ^ "The Official Site of the Negro Spirituals, antique Gospel Music". www.negrospirituals.com.
  104. ^ ""Follow the Drinking Gourd"—African American Spiritual". www.eduplace.com.
  105. . Kelley said that the 1928 popular account by H.B. Parks was implausible.
  106. ^ Bresler, Joel. "Follow the Drinking Gourd: A Cultural History". Retrieved May 5, 2008.
  107. ^ "About the African-American Spiritual". Charleston Spiritual Ensemble. August 4, 2012. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  108. ^ a b c d Brown, Sterling Allen (Winter 1953). "Negro Folk Expression: Spirituals, Seculars, Ballads and Work Songs". University of Illinois, Department of English. Retrieved June 6, 2013.
  109. ^ Carawan, Guy; Carawan, Candie; Raim, Ethel (1968), Freedom is a constant struggle: songs of the freedom movement, with documentary photographs, New York: Oak Publications
  110. ^ "Wade in the Water". University Libraries at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Music Library UT Song Index.
  111. ^ Carl Sandburg (1927). The American Songbag. Harcourt, Brace and Company.
  112. OCLC 973412280
    .
  113. ^ Amiri Baraka (1999) [1963]. Blues People (2 ed.).
  114. S2CID 144222938
  115. ^ "The Historical Roots of Blues Music". African American Intellectual History Society. May 9, 2018. Retrieved March 1, 2020.
  116. ^
    Grove Music Online
    . Oxford Music Online. Retrieved October 3, 2015.
  117. .
  118. .
  119. .
  120. ^ Kunzler, Martin (1988). Jazz-Lexicon. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag.
  121. ^ Komara, Ed (2005). ""Crazy Blues"—Mamie Smith (1920) - Added to the National Registry: 2005" (PDF). Library of Congress. Retrieved August 9, 2020.
  122. ^ "Crazy Blues" was recorded by Okeh Records and its catalogue number is 4169.
  123. ^ Welding, Pete (September 1966). "Ethnomusicology". University of Illinois Press.
  124. .
  125. .
  126. ^ "Oh Jonah!". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
  127. .
  128. ^ .

Further reading

External links

Audio samples