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The performance of spirituals was given a rebirth when a group of students from newly founded Fisk University of Nashville, Tennessee, began to tour in an effort to raise money for the financially strapped school.
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There is no singing in parts, as we understand it, and yet no two appear to be singing the same thing-the leading 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. And I despair of conveying any notion of the effect of a number singing together, especially in a complicated shout, like “I can’t stay behind, my Lord” (No. The voices of the colored people have a peculiar quality that nothing can imitate and the intonations and delicate variations of even one singer cannot be reproduced on paper. The best that we can do, however, with paper and types, or even with voices, will convey but a faint shadow of the original. In the preface of Slave Songs, compiler William Francis Allen described the difficulty they had recording the spirituals they heard: Two of the most significant of these accounts are found in Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s Army Life in a Black Regiment, which recounted the slave songs he heard the black Union soldiers sing, and the 1867 publication, Slave Songs of the United States. The spiritual seemed destined to be relegated to mention in slave narratives and to a handful of historical accounts by whites who had attempted to notate the songs they heard. With the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the conclusion of the American Civil War, and the ratification of the 13 th Amendment to the Constitution officially abolishing slavery in 1865, most former slaves distanced themselves from the music of their captivity. Some of the best known spirituals include: “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” “Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen”, “Steal Away,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Go Down, Moses,” “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand,” “Every Time I Feel the Spirit,” “Let Us Break Bread Together on Our Knees,” and “Wade in the Water.” There is record of approximately 6,000 spirituals or sorrow songs however, the oral tradition of the slaves’ ancestors-and the prohibition against slaves learning to read or write-meant that the actual number of songs is unknown. These folksongs were improvised as suited the singers. Spirituals were created extemporaneously and were passed orally from person to person. This was particularly the case when a slave was planning to escape bondage and to seek freedom via the Underground Railroad. The songs were also used to communicate with one another without the knowledge of their masters. If slaves couldn’t read the Bible, they would memorize Biblical stories they heard and translate them into songs. If you stood around long enough, you’d hear a song about the blind man seeing, God troubling the water, Ezekiel seeing a wheel, Jesus being crucified and raised from the dead. They could tell you about Mary, Jesus, God, and the Devil. They sang of the Hebrew children and Joshua at the battle of Jericho. They knew about Adam and Eve in the Garden, about Moses and the Red Sea. My people told stories, from Genesis to Revelation, with God’s faithful as the main characters. Their songs, which were to become known as spirituals, reflected the slaves’ need to express their new faith: They re-shaped it into a deeply personal way of dealing with the oppression of their enslavement. Over the years, these slaves and their descendants adopted Christianity, the religion of their masters. This stolen race was deprived of their languages, families, and cultures yet, their masters could not take away their music. Negro spirituals are songs created by the Africans who were captured and brought to the United States to be sold into slavery. (Excerpt from The Gospel Truth about the Negro Spiritual, by Randye Jones) A Brief History The Negro Spiritual: From Cotton Field to Concert Hall