History On African-American Spirituals

 For today's blog i'm going to be giving you guys information about African-American Spirituals. I choose this genre because I've heard about in during one of my history classes before, but we didn't really dig deeper into it. With that being said i'm interested to learn more.

African-American Spirituals are songs created by Africans who were captured and brought and sold into slavery. They are also known as Negro spirituals. Although it's impossible to determine when the first spirituals were created, most people believe near the end of the eighteenth century.Their languages, family, and culture were stripped from them, but they could not take away their music. The original composers of these songs are unknown. Their songs became known a spirituals. This music was inspired by African music. They sort of mimicked blues and gospel music. In their songs, the slaves named issues and fears they could not express publicly. They were also used to communicate with each other without there master knowing what they were saying. The words were biblical but the messages were personal because they imagined freedom through the songs. For example when slaves were planning on running away they would use their spirituals to communicate with each other. The songs were passed from person to person orally to avoid any chances of being caught. People sang from memory or learned songs at the meetings. African American spirituals laid the groundwork for newer genres of music, especially gospel. These spirituals were sometimes called sorrow songs. They were called this because the slaves used these songs to express deep suffering, endurance, and their hope for freedom. 

Spirituals were often interactive songs, using call and response singing. They were simply improvised mostly. This means the leader sings a main verse, the call, and the group sings the response.Anyone could interject and say a new verse.Some lines might be repeated, remembered, and sung the next time.The melodies were also improvised. Many of the songs were intense, slow, and Melancholic. They can also be upbeat and their repetitive lyrics and pentatonic melodies make them easy to learn. The vocal style was very free form which made it challenging for publishers to document correctly.

Some of the instruments involved in these spirituals were the drum, the banjo, the bones, the bania and the marimba. Slaves introduced many new instruments to the Unites States. The drums allowed the slaves to send codes from plantation to plantations. Some masters caught on and banned the use of drums from their plantation. When the drum was banned the slaves beat their heels on wooden floors to mimic the drum sound. Spirituals became mostly a cappella or accompanied only by clapping.They would also create handmade instruments for them to use.      

                                                                                                                       

Some of the most well known spirituals are "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child," "Go down Moses," and "Wade in the water." "Swing low, sweet chariot," composed by Wallis Willis was also a popular spiritual. Most of these songs had great meaning behind them. The lyrics of "Steal Away" alerted slaves that a religious meeting would occur that night; slaves sang the song all day until they notified everyone. Harriet Tubman used the spirituals "Wade in the Water" and "Deep River" to warn slaves to travel in the water to throw off their scent from the dogs. A spiritual that was certainly used as a code for escape to freedom was "Go down, Moses," used by Harriet Tubman to identify herself to slaves who might want to flee north. The lyrics of "The Gospel train" are "She is coming... Get onboard... There's room for many more..." This is a direct call to go away, by riding a "train" which stops at "stations". Some reports indicate that Nat Turner, who organized a violent uprising of enslaved people, used the "Steal Away" song as a call to action. The lyrics were, "steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus, steal away, steal away home, I aint got long to stay here." The lyrics to spirituals have vivid imagery and symbolic language. While spirituals often had these hidden subtexts, they were also beautiful songs of Christian faith, hope, and spirit.

Citations

African American Spirituals. Web.. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200197495/>.

Jones, Randye. “The Negro Spiritual.” THE SPIRITUALS DATABASE, 12 Feb. 2019, https://spirituals-database.com/the-negro-spiritual/.

White, Alan. “Styles – Spirituals.” Early Gospel Music, 12 May 2017, https://www.earlygospel.com/styles-spirituals/. 

Bell, Karen Cook. “Literacy, History, and African American Spirituals.” AAIHS, 24 Dec. 2018, https://www.aaihs.org/literacy-history-and-african-american-spirituals/.