The Negro Spirituals

Origins

For more than a century a controversy has raged concerning the origin of the spirituals originally sung by African-Americans in the South and about their relationship to the religious songs of whites. Where did the spirituals of African-Americans come from? What is their relationship, if any, to the music of West Africa and to that of Europe? Do the spirituals of African-Americans exhibit to a high degree or to a low degree cultural traits derived from West Africa? Or are these spirituals primarily borrowings from the culture of the white man?

It was at first assumed that Black spirituals represented, in essence, the spontaneous out- burst and expression of the anguish experienced by human beings in bondage, that is, of African- American slaves. An early writer on the topic, James Weldon Johnson, wrote:

"Aframerican folk art, an art by Africa out of America, Negro creative genius working under the spur and backlash of American conditions, is unlike anything else in America or elsewhere, nor could it have been possible in any other place or in any other times"

(James Weldon Johnson papers, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.).

Performance

Spirituals form a vital part of the great musical heritage of African-Americans. As an art form, they incorporate elements from history, literature, religion, drama, and music. A great variety of ethnic and cultural elements also went into their making.

Perhaps the element of performance should be regarded as the single most important factor in spirituals. It is the performance that shapes the song, that determines its rhythm, melody, tex- ture, tempo, text, and, finally, its effect upon listeners. This is largely due to the importance of improvision in the African tradition. The song as written down represented only one performance in which the main stable elements were the meter, the refrain texts, and the basic outlines of the melody. All else could change from performance to performance: syncopations and dotted rhythms could be introduced at different places; embellishments and pitch alterations could be added to or eliminated from the melody; the "basers" could join the singing or drop out of it at varying time intervals, and they could provide different harmonizing tones for the melody. Even the general form of the piece might be changed by the repetition of refrain lines or chorusus.

In regard to all these matters, William Francis Allen wrote of encouragement to the users of his pioneer collection of Negro spirituals. Slave Songs in the United States, first published in 1867:

We have aimed to give all the characteristic variations [for the songs] which have come into our hands, whether as single notes or whole lines, or even longer passages; and of words as well as tunes. . . . It may sometimes be a little difficult . . . to determine precisely the relationship between all these things] ... However much latitude the reader may take in all such matters, he will hardly take more than the negroes themselves do. . . . The rests [in the notated songs], by the way, do not indicate a cessation in the music, but only in part of the singers. They overlap in singing, as already described, in such a degree that at no time is there any complete pause.

Adding to all this complexity in the performance of spirituals was the practice of audience participation—indeed, in the strict sense of the term there was no audience. There were only singers and nonsingers. The whites who came to listen might sit quietly, showing their appreciation of a performance by facial expression and by applause at appropriate times, but the African-Americans actively participated in the performance, not only by clapping and tapping, but also by constantly interjecting spoken or chanted words in order to reinforce the meaning of the text. Some short phrases commonly interjected include "Yes, Lord," "0 Lord," and "I say now."

The nature of these interpolations depended upon the occasion. One reporter has recorded that on one occasion the men watching a shout gave encouragement by yelling, "Wake 'em, brother!" and "Stand up to 'em, brother!"

The voice quality cultivated by the early singers of spirituals was high-pitched and of great intensity. Without exception, contemporary accounts refer to the "far-sounding harmony," "vigorous chorus," and the "great billows of sound" produced by the Blacks' singing. For example, when Afro-Americans gathered for corn-shucking jubilees, as many as 300 or more would participate in some places; they would sing as they marched along the roads, their "rich, deep voices swelling out" on the refrains.

Even the singing of two Afro-Americans as they walked through a forest "would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs." When the Blacks sang psalms and hymns during their religious services, they sang "loud and slow." With regard to the individual voice, there are few contemporary references except those noting some slave's unusually wide range. One observer does remark. however, that the voices of the slaves on her plantation seemed "oftener tenor than any other quality." A number of other reporters have commented upon the free use of falsetto among the slaves, particularly in the field hollers.

The first important collection of African-American spirituals, which included 136 examples, was compiled in 1867 by William Francis Alien, Charles Picard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison. Slave Songs in the United States, as their volume is entitled, was reprinted by Oak Publications in 1965. Another very famous collection and arrangement of spirituals was made by James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson. Their volume, The Book of American Negro Spirituals, was issued by the Viking Press in 1925 and 1926. It was reissued in iViking Compass edition in 1969.

Other important collections with notes or arrangements include: Seventy Negro Spirituals (William Arms Fisher); American Negro Songs and Spirituals (Monroe N, Work); Dett Collection of Negro Spiritual (R. Nathaniel Dett): The Story of the Jubilee Singers (J. B. T. Marsh): Cabin and Plantation Songs (Hampton Institute collection): and Old Songs Hymnal (Harry T. Burleigh).

Unfortunately, many spirituals were never written down, and thus have passed from memory in the course of time. Others, however, survive in many versions with variants in tunes and texts. The library of Congress, in Washington, D.C., has assembled a collection of more than 6,000 spirituals and variants in its music division.