What's the Legacy of African American Spirituals?

the African American spiritual was born. Although white communities had their own folk spirituals, Enslaved people use spirituals as a form of work song in order to boost their companion's spirits, convey their sorrows, convey secret messages, and seek comfort in religion. For the article, this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with Sandra Jean Graham via email back in twenty twenty a. Graham is now a professor of ethno musicology at Babson College and the author of the book Spirituals

and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry. She explained that although enslaved Africans came from many different societies, there were some widespread musical traditions that brought about the spiritual, including communal songs featuring call and response, in which some performers or usually the leader would call out a statement

or ask a question and other singers would respond. She explained that many songs also exhibited a flexible, approached pitch and a pattern of repetition and variation that allowed for overlapping musical layers and improvised embellishment of melodies and rhythm. A. Graham also cites Black composer and scholar Ollie Wilson, who stated that there was a general preference for a heterogeneous sound ideal, or a combination of certain timbers of voices

and instruments. A Graham said. In addition, music was usually linked to other acts such as dance, poetry, drama, clothing, and it played a prominent role in social and political life. And finally, music had a spiritual aspect linked to ritual the ancestors, the gods that inhabited the natural world. Perhaps most famously, enslaved people sometimes communicated secret messages through spirituals as a way to bypass the enslavers who would be

listening in on their conversations. For example, some sang through coded songs to provide instructions that would allow a route for escape to the north and to freedom, particularly on the underground railroad. A. Graham said, Harriet Tubman famously used go down Moses to signal that she was nearby and ready to conduct people to the north, and she used wade in the water to direct her passengers toward a

river if bloodhounds were on their trail. Frederick Douglas, who became a prominent abolitionist after escaping slavery, later wrote about singing a spiritual during an escape attempt, including words run to Jesus, shun the danger. I ain't going to stay much longer here. However, Douglas wrote that the enslavers caught

onto their plan because they sang too fervently. It's possible that spirituals didn't function as much in escape attempts as we might think, although Graham says it's impossible to know due to the lack of written documentation. But after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the United States, spirituals took on a new purpose in black communities. They

became a key fixture of commercial entertainment during the Reconstruction era. A. Graham said, the folk spirituals evolved during reconstruction to become arranged concert music that was written down and sold in books and sheet music. This new spiritual was intended to be more of a presentational experience with performers and observers, rather than a communal experience in which all attendees participated.

A grim continued. So the biggest change was that spirituals were presented as art music and were also committed to print, removing the plethora of opportunities for improvisation and participation that the folk tradition had provided. There was one group who popularized this concert spiritual more than any other, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who went on tour to fundraise for Fisk

University in the eighteen seventies. After the singer's tour, their spirituals became branded as Jubilee songs, which held sway in pop culture through the end of the eighteen hundreds. In the early nineteen hundreds, the famed Black American classical composer Harry T. Burley took up the mantle and began composing and arranging spirituals for solo singers and pianists, including songs considered classics today like Deep River and Swing Low Sweet Chariot.

Many popular singers performed them widely in the nineteen tenths through the nineteen forty, but in the latter half of the twentieth century, spirituals fell out of favor among some Black Americans. Randy Jones wrote in her book So You Want to Sing Spirituals? A Guide for performers, that quote as a result of the rebirth of racial pride obtained

from the civil rights struggles of the nineteen sixties. Anything that appeared to reflect passivity and acceptance of the status quo was rejected by the young warriors who fought in the trenches to reap the rewards of political activism. She wrote that many black activists turned to gospel music instead, which had risen out of Pentecostal worship in the early

nineteen hundreds. A Graham expanded on the difference between gospel music and spirituals, as she said, whereas spirituals focused on the afterlife as a source of eventual freedom, a gospel meaning good news songs focused on the here and now, how to get through each day. But what about the connection between spirituals and other musical traditions within black communities, such as the blues. A Graham cites theologian James Cone,

who called blues secular spirituals. A. Graham said they may have been born in freedom, but African Americans still suffered, and the blues was a vessel into which they poured their daily troubles. Lots of blues artists even saying spirituals in the blues style. In the twenty first century, spirituals may primarily serve as a form of legacy music or a remembrance of the past. A. Graham said, it is true that spirituals are, in a sense no longer a

living tradition. The last time they were newly created to serve a vital social role was during the Civil Rights movement. However, spirituals also live on today in the imagination and work of modern day artists like the Macintosh County Shower and pianist Lara Downs. Downs twenty twenty album Some of These Days, reflects on social justice themes, particularly through her contemporary rendition

of spirituals. Hastaff Works also spoke by email with Downs, who explained that she chose spirituals partly as a way to connect to her family history and the black struggle for freedom. She said, my dad was black and my mom is white, and they met at a sit in during the civil rights movement, and that movement was really powered by this music, these spirituals and freedom songs, and so this music was the soundtrack to their activism and

their love story. Downs wrote of being drawn to the emotional intensity, defiance, and underlying message of hope within spirituals. She said she drew inspiration from performances by black singers and civil rights activists like Mahellia Jackson and Nina Simone. She said that spirituals represent quote our conscience and our courage, and that they also remind her of the uneven nature

of progress throughout US history. She said they are the best possible reminder that the road to freedom is a long one and we still have a long way to go, that we have to keep moving forward despite roadblocks and hazards, and we have the ancestors at our backs. Today's episode is based on the article the Legacy of African American Spirituals in Today's Gospel and Blues Music on howstaffworks dot Com,

written by Terry yr Lagata. Brainstuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.