Negro Spirituals

    The religious songs of the Negro have commonly been accepted as characteristic music of the race. The name Spirituals given them long ago is still current and many songs still retain their former qualities. Whatever may be the relative place they hold in the life, history, and nature of the Negro, there will scarcely be any doubt as to the power of their appeal, then or now.
    The wild, sad strains tell, as the sufferers themselves could, of crushed hope, keen sorrow and a dull, daily misery, which covered them as hopelessly as the fog from the rice swamps. On the other hand the words breath a trusting faith in rest for the future to which their eyes seem constantly turned. The attitude is always the same, and, as a comment on the life of the race, is pathetic. Nothing but patience for this life -- nothing but triumph for the next.
    One can but feel that these quaint old spirituals with their peculiar melodies, having served their time with effectiveness, deserve a better fate than to sink into oblivion as unvalued and unrecorded examples of a bygone civilization.
    The Negro found satisfaction in singing, not only at church, but perhaps even more while he performed his daily tasks. Those who heard the old slaves sing will never forget the scenes that accompanied the songs.
    In Twenty-four Negro Melodies by Coleridge-Taylor in The Musician's Library, Booker T. Washington said, "The Negro folk song has for the Negro race the same value that the folk song of any other people has for that people. It reminds the race of the 'rock whence it was hewn,' it fosters race pride, and in the days of slavery it furnished an outlet for the anguish of smitten hearts. The plantation song in America, although an outgrowth of oppression and bondage, contains surprisingly few references to slavery. No race has ever sung so sweetly or with such perfect charity, while looking forward to the 'year of Jubilee.' The songs abound in Scriptural allusions, and in many instances are unique interpretations of standard hymns. The plantation songs known as the 'spirituals' are the spontaneous outbursts of intense religious fervor, and had their origin chiefly in the camp-meetings, the revivals and in other religious exercises. They breathe a childlike faith in a personal Father, and glow with the hope that the children of bondage will ultimately pass out of the wilderness of slavery into the land of freedom. In singing of a deliverance which they believed would surely come, with bodies swaying, with enthusiasm born of a common experience and of a common hope, they lost sight for the moment of the auction block, of the separation of mother and child, of sister and brother. There is in the plantation songs a pathos and a beauty that appeals to a wide range of tastes, and their harmony makes abiding impression upon persons of the highest culture. The music of these songs goes to the heart because it comes from the heart."
    Negro Spirituals are beautiful, childlike, simple and plaintive. They are the Negro's own songs and are the peculiar expression of his own being.
    Many of the old spirituals that were common in slavery are still current and are sung with but little modification; others are greatly modified and enlarged or shortened. Traces of the slave songs may be found in the more modern spirituals that sprang up after the Civil War. The majority of the songs have several versions, differing according to localities, and affected by continual modifications as they have been used for many years. Some have been so blended with other songs, and filled with new ideas, as to be scarcely recognizable, but are clearly the product of the Negro singers.
    All of the Negro's church music tends to take into it the qualities of his native expression -- strains minor and sad in their general character. The religious "tone" is a part of the song, and both words and music are characterized by a peculiar plaintiveness.
    It is scarcely possible to trace the origin of the first spiritual and plantation songs. The American Negroes appear to have had their own songs from the earliest days of slavery. While their first songs were undoubtedly founded upon the African songs as a basis, both in form and meaning, little trace of them can be found in the present song.
    Many of the Negro folk songs may be explained when one has observed the Negro in many walks of life, or has found the conditions from which they arose. Many of the old spirituals were composed in their first forms by the Negro preachers for their congregations; others were composed by the slaves in the various walks of life, while still others were first sung by the "mammies" as they passed the time in imaginative melody-making and sought harmony of words and music.
    What the Negro composed accidentally he learned to sing, and thus introduced a real song in his community, which was soon to be carried to other localities. The Negro is going to sing whether he has a formal song or not.

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