African American Spirituals

The African American spirituals are one of the most consequential bodies of religious music ever produced. The tradition emerged among enslaved Africans and African Americans in the American South across the 18th and 19th centuries — through the encounter of West African musical and religious traditions with the Protestant Christianity (especially in its evangelical and Methodist-Baptist forms) that the slaveholders imposed and that the enslaved transformed into something at once recognizably Christian and profoundly different from the white Christianity around them.

The tradition’s substrate

Several elements braided together:

• West African musical structure — call-and-response (the leader’s lines answered by the group), polyrhythm, the use of the body in music (clapping, foot-stomping, swaying), the slide and bent notes that carry into all subsequent American Black music, the integration of music into work and ritual.
• Protestant hymnody — the texts and tunes the enslaved heard in the camp meetings, the brush arbor gatherings, and the white-led services they were sometimes permitted to attend.
• Biblical narrative — especially the Hebrew Bible’s accounts of slavery and liberation: the Exodus story, Daniel in the lions’ den, Joshua at Jericho, Ezekiel and the dry bones. These narratives were taken up with extraordinary directness by enslaved people who recognized their own situation in them.
• The conditions of slavery — the music was made in fields, in slave quarters, in secret religious gatherings (the “hush harbors” the enslaved held away from white observation), at funerals, at weddings, at the moments of greatest crisis and the moments of greatest joy.

What the spirituals do

The spirituals work simultaneously on several levels:

• As theology. The spirituals articulate, in compressed poetic form, a theological position: God is the liberator of the oppressed; the suffering of the present is real; the promise of redemption is more real. Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land; tell old Pharaoh, let my people go. The theological position is older than abolitionism and shaped abolitionism decisively.
• As covert resistance literature. Many spirituals carry coded meanings about escape and freedom. Wade in the water signaled escapees to wade through streams to throw off slave-catcher dogs. Steal away to Jesus signaled secret meetings. Follow the drinking gourd gave directions north using the Big Dipper. The Underground Railroad operated in part through this musical signaling.
• As lament and consolation. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child; Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen; Were you there when they crucified my Lord. The tradition does not deny pain. It carries the pain into community and through the sustained singing — into the conviction that the pain is held by God and the community.
• As the founding body of Black American sacred music. Substantial subsequent traditions — the gospel music of Thomas Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin’s church work; the blues; jazz; soul; the music of Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder; the protest music of the civil rights movement (We Shall Overcome descended from a spiritual hymn) — all derive substantially from the spirituals.

The principal canonical songs

A non-exhaustive list of widely-recognized spirituals (each with substantial scholarly and recording history):

• Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
• Go Down, Moses
• Were You There When They Crucified My Lord
• Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen
• Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
• Wade in the Water
• Steal Away to Jesus
• Deep River
• Roll, Jordan, Roll
• Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho
• I’ll Fly Away (later, but in the lineage)
• Lift Every Voice and Sing (the Negro National Anthem; James Weldon Johnson, 1899; in the spiritual tradition)
• We Shall Overcome (the civil rights anthem; descends from spiritual material)

The 19th-century documentation and continuing transmission

The spirituals were transmitted orally for most of their history. The first major documentation was Slave Songs of the United States (1867), edited by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison — the first published collection. The Fisk Jubilee Singers of Fisk University began touring with the spirituals in 1871 and substantially established their place in American and international concert music. Subsequent scholarly documentation by W.E.B. Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folk, 1903, contains substantial reflection on the spirituals as the foundational Black American art form), James Weldon Johnson (The Books of American Negro Spirituals, 1925, 1926), John W. Work II and III, John Wesley Work, and Eileen Southern (The Music of Black Americans: A History, 1971) has been continuous.

The tradition is alive. Spirituals are sung in Black churches across the United States daily; they are performed in concert halls and in movements; they are studied in conservatories and in scholarly literature. Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes, Leontyne Price, Jessye Norman, and many other major African American concert artists made the spirituals central to their repertoires.

What this gives the platform

Three contributions:

1. A model of spiritual [[resilience|resilience]]. The spirituals were produced under conditions of catastrophic violence and dehumanization, and they produced a body of religious art that still nourishes substantial parts of American religious life. [[0mn1one|The platform]] takes the tradition as evidence that contemplative-spiritual depth can survive and even flourish under conditions that should crush it.
2. A foundational American religious tradition. The spirituals are not a Black subspecialty within American Christianity; they are arguably the most distinctive American religious-musical contribution to global Christianity. Engaging them is engaging the substrate of much subsequent American religious culture.
3. An ongoing teaching about the relation of music and theology. The theological work the spirituals do is not separable from their musical form. The music is the theology. [[0mn1one|The platform]] takes this seriously as a model of how spiritual articulation actually works.

See also

Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.

• Subset of: [[christian-mysticism]]
• Parallels: [[spirituality]]

Sources

1. W.E.B. Du Bois. The Souls of Black Folk. A.C. McClurg, 1903. (Especially chapter 14, The Sorrow Songs.) Source class: book / foundational reflection.
2. James Weldon Johnson & J. Rosamond Johnson. The Books of American Negro Spirituals (2 vols.). Viking, 1925, 1926. Source class: book / foundational anthology.
3. John Lovell Jr. Black Song: The Forge and the Flame. Macmillan, 1972. Source class: book / definitive scholarly study.
4. Eileen Southern. The Music of Black Americans: A History. Norton, 1971 (rev. 1997). Source class: book / scholarly history.
5. [[howard-thurman|Howard Thurman]]. Deep River and the Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death. Harper, 1955. Source class: book / theological reflection by a major figure (see [[howard-thurman]]).
6. Slave Songs of the United States. Ed. William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, & Lucy McKim Garrison. Simpson, 1867. Source class: book / first major published collection.

Lenses still to grow

• The Fisk Jubilee Singers as a continuing institution and historical phenomenon.
• Specific spirituals in detail — each major canonical song deserves its own treatment.
• The relationship to the blues, gospel, and subsequent Black American music in detail.
• [[howard-thurman|Howard Thurman]]‘s theological reflections on the spirituals (his Deep River book).
• The hush harbor tradition as the secret religious gatherings where much of this music lived.
• The civil rights movement’s musical use of the spirituals.