Spiritual as a noun is used to denote songs created by American slaves, and the style in which they were sung. The term is often broadened to include subsequent arrangements into more standard American hymnodic styles, and to include post-emancipation songs with stylistic similarities to the original spirituals. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... For other uses, see Hymn (disambiguation). ... In music a singer or vocalist is a type of musician who sings, i. ... Blues music redirects here. ... Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as (in terms of the varying music styles) to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Most Negro spiritual melodies can be played on the Pentatonic scale. In music, a pentatonic scale is a scale with five notes per octave. ...

Historical spirituals

The term spiritual is derived from spiritual song. The King James Bible's translation of Ephesians V.19 is: "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord." Negro spiritual first appears in print in the 1860's, where slaves are described as using the noun "spiritual"for religious songs sung sitting or standing in place, and spiritual shouts for more dance-like music. This page is about the version of the Bible; for the Harvey Danger album, see King James Version (album). ...

Although numerous rhythmically and sonic elements of spirituals can be traced to African sources, nonetheless it is a fact that spirituals are a musical form that is indigenous and specific to the religious experience in the United States of Africans transported from Africa. They are a result of the interaction of African religious elements with music and religion derived from Europe. Further, this interaction occurred only in the United States. Africans converted to Christianity in other parts of the world, even in the Caribbean and Latin American, did not evolve this form.^[1] West Indies redirects here. ... Latin America consists of the countries of South America and some of North America (including Central America and some the islands of the Caribbean) whose inhabitants mostly speak Romance languages, although Native American languages are also spoken. ...

Negro spirituals were primarily expressions of religious faith. They may also have served as socio-political protests veiled as assimilation to white American culture. They were originated by enslaved African-Americans in the United States. Slavery was introduced to the British colonies in the early seventeenth century, and enslaved people largely replaced indentured servants as an economic labor force during the 17th century. These people would remain in bondage for the entire 18th century and much of the 19th century. Most were not fully emancipated until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Slave redirects here. ... An indentured servant (also called a bonded laborer) is a labourer unde from the employer in exchange for an extension to the period of their indenture, which could thereby continue indefinitely. ... (16th century - 17th century - 18th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601-1700. ... (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Amendment XIII in the National Archives The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished, and continues to prohibit slavery and, with limited exceptions (those convicted of a crime), prohibits involuntary servitude. ...

During slavery in the United States, there were systematic efforts to de-Africanize the captive Black workforce. Enslaved people were forbidden from speaking their native languages.

Restrictions were placed on the religious expression of slaves. Rows of benches in places of worship discouraged congregants from spontaneously jumping to their feet and dancing. The use of musical instruments of any kind often was forbidden, and slaves were ordered to desist from the "paganism" of the practice of spiritual possession. Nonetheless, the Christian principles that teach those who suffer on earth hold a special place with God in heaven undoubtedly spoke to the enslaved who saw this as hope and could certainly relate to the suffering of Jesus. For this reason many slaves genuinely embraced Christianity.

Because they were unable to express themselves freely in ways that were spiritually meaningful to them, enslaved Africans often held secret religious services. During these “bush meetings,” worshippers were free to engage in African religious rituals such as spiritual possession, speaking in tongues and shuffling in counterclockwise ring shouts to communal shouts and chants. It was there also that enslaved Africans further crafted the impromptu musical expression of field songs into the so-called "line singing" and intricate, multi-part harmonies of struggle and overcoming, faith, forbearance and hope that have come to be known as "Black Spirituals." Spiritual possession is a concept of supernatural and/or superstitious belief systems whereby gods, daemons, demons, animas, or other disincarnate entities may temporarily take control of a human body, resulting in noticeable changes in behaviour. ... A shout or ring shout is an ecstatic dance ritual, first practiced by African slaves in the West Indies and the United States, in which worshippers move in a circle while shuffling their feet and clapping their hands. ...

While slaveowners used Christianity to teach enslaved Africans to be long-suffering, forgiving and obedient to their masters, as practiced by the enslaved, it became something of a liberation theology. The story of Moses and The Exodus of the "children of Israel" and the idea of an Old Testament God who struck down the enemies of His "chosen people" resonated deeply with the enslaved ("He's a battleaxe in time of war and a shelter in a time of storm"). In Black hands and hearts, Christian theology became an instrument of liberation. Liberation theology is a school of theology within the Catholic Church that focuses on Jesus Christ as not only the Redeemer but also the Liberator of the oppressed. ... Moses with the Tablets, 1659, by Rembrandt This article is about the Biblical figure. ... The Exodus or Ytsiyat Mitsrayim (Hebrew: יציאת מצרים, Tiberian: , the going out of Egypt) refers to the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt. ... Languages Historical Jewish languages Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, others Liturgical languages: Hebrew and Aramaic Predominant spoken languages: The vernacular language of the home nation in the Diaspora, significantly including English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian Religions Judaism Related ethnic groups Arabs and other Semitic groups For the Jewish religion, see Judaism. ... Topics in Christianity Movements · Denominations · Other religions Ecumenism · Preaching · Prayer Music · Liturgy · Calendar Symbols · Art · Criticism Important figures Apostle Paul · Church Fathers Constantine · Athanasius · Augustine Anselm · Aquinas · Palamas · Luther Calvin · Wesley Arius · Marcion of Sinope Archbishop of Canterbury · Catholic Pope Coptic Pope · Ecumenical Patriarch Christianity Portal This box:      Note: Judaism... This article is about the term God in the context of monotheism and henotheism. ... Theology finds its scholars pursuing the understanding of and providing reasoned discourse of religion, spirituality and God or the gods. ...

So, too, in many instances did the spirituals themselves. Spirituals sometimes provided comfort and eased the boredom of daily tasks, but above all, they were an expression of spiritual devotion and a yearning for freedom from bondage. Songs like "Steal Away (to Jesus)", or "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" raised unexpectedly in a dusty field, or sung softly in the dark of night, possibly signalled that the coast was clear and the time to escape had come. The River Jordan became the Ohio River, or the Mississippi, or another body of water that had to be crossed on the journey to freedom. Many internet sources and popular books claim that songs such as “Wade in the Water” contained explicit instructions to fugitive slaves on how to avoid capture and the route to take to successfully make their way to freedom.[1] This particular song allegedly recommends leaving dry land and taking to the water as a strategy to throw pursuing bloodhounds off one's trail. “The Gospel Train” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” are equally supposed to contain veiled references to the Underground Railroad, and many sources assert that Follow the Drinking Gourd contained a coded map to the Underground Railroad. These claims, as popular as they are, do not hold up to reasoned and informed inquiry; for example, the sources provide no firsthand evidence of the use of coded songs or distort the firsthand accounts that are available (e.g. Frederick Douglass) in order to support their claims.^{[2] [3]} This article is about Jesus of Nazareth. ... Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is a United States African-American Negro spiritual song. ... Wade in the Water is the name of a widely covered Negro spiritual, made popular in the 1960s by the Ramsey Lewis Trio and later by Eva Cassidy. ... H. B. Lindsley, Harriet Tubman, c. ... H. B. Lindsley, Harriet Tubman, c. ...

In the 1850s, Reverend Alexander Reid, superintendent of the Spencer Academy in the old Choctaw Nation, hired some enslaved Africans from the Indians for some work around the school. He heard two of them, "Uncle Wallace" and "Aunt Minerva" Willis, singing religious songs they had composed. Among these songs were Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Steal Away to Jesus, The Angels are Coming, I'm a Rolling, and Roll Jordan Roll. Later, Reid, who left Indian Territory at the beginning of the Civil War, attended a musical program put on by a group of Negro singers from Fisk University. Although they were singing mostly popular music of the day, Reid thought the songs he remembered from his time in the Choctaw Nation would be appropriate. He and his wife transcribed the songs of the Willises as they remembered them and sent them to Fisk University. The Jubilee Singers put on their first performance singing the old captives' songs at a religious conference in 1871. The songs were first published in 1872 in a book titled Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University, by Thomas F. Steward. Later these religious songs became known as "Black spirituals" to distinguish this music from the spiritual music of other peoples. Wallace Willis died in 1883 or 84. The Fisk Jubilee Singers were a group of African American singers in the 1870s. ...

Over time the pieces the Jubilee Singers performed came to be arranged and performed by trained musicians. In 1873, Mark Twain, whose father had owned slaves, found Fisk singing to be "in the genuine old way" he remembered from childhood, but an 1881 performance review said that "they have lost the wild rhythms, the barbarity, the passion." Fifty years on, Zora Neale Hurston in her 1938 book The Sanctified Church criticized Fisk singers, and similar groups at Tuskegee and Hampton, as using a "Glee Club style" that was "full of musicians' tricks" not to be found in the original spirituals, urging readers to visit an "unfashionable Negro church" to experience real spirituals. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),[1] better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American humanist,[2] humorist, satirist, lecturer and writer. ... Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American folklorist and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, best known for the 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. ...

A second important early collection of lyrics is Slave Songs of the United States by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison (1867).

A group of lyrics to "Negro spirituals" was published by Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who served as the commander of a regiment of former slaves in the Civil War, in an article in The Atlantic Monthly and subsequently included in his 1869 memoir Army Life in a Black Regiment (1869).^[4] Thomas Wentworth Higginson (December 22, 1823 - May 9, 1911) was an American author, abolitionist, and soldier. ...

Musicologist George Pullen Jackson extended the term to a wider range of folk hymnody, as in his 1938 book White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands, but this does not appear to have been widespread usage previously. "Spiritual song" was often used in the white Christian community through the 19th century (and indeed much earlier), but not "spiritual." George Pullen Jackson (1874-1953) was an American educator and musicologist. ...

Samples

• Listen to "Pharaoh's Army Got Drowned," artists unknown (765 KB)
• Download recording of "My Good Lord Done Been Here", spiritual song from the Library of Congress' John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip; performed by Aunt Florida Hampton on May 29, 1939, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. P.W. Tartt in Livingston, Alabama
• Download recording of "Roll the Old Chariot Along", spiritual and sea shanty from the Library of Congress'
• Gordon Collection; performed by unknown persons in the Bay Area of California in the early 1920s
• Download recording of "Deep Down in My Heart", spiritual from the Library of Congress' Gordon Collection; performed by W. M. Givens in Darien, Georgia, on about March 19, 1926

Livingston is a city located in Sumter County, Alabama. ... Sea shanties (singular shanty, also spelled chantey; derived from the French word chanter, to sing) were shipboard working songs. ... Darien is a city located in McIntosh County, Georgia. ...

Choirs, bands, and ensembles

• Deep River Boys

The Deep River Boys were an American vocal group active from the mid 1930s to the mid 1950s, singing spirituals, gospel, and R&B. The group consisted of Harry Douglas (baritone), Vernon Gardner (first tenor), George Lawson (second tenor), Jimmy Lundy and Edward Ware (bass). ...

Footnotes

2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance to the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 125th day of the year (126th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance to the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 62nd day of the year (63rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• http://www.spiritualsproject.org

• http://ctl.du.edu/spirituals

• http://www.tnstate.edu/library/digital/FISK.HTM Fisk Jubilee Singers

• "Coded Slave Songs," with an analysis of "Follow the Drinkin' Gourd"

• Video and Audio Excerpts relating to Marian Anderson

• [2] Publication "Steal Away to Jesus: African-American Spirituals in the Episcopal Church," by Rev. E. E. Asbury

• Historical Notes on African American melodies, including 75 spirituals with downloadable arrangements for solo instrument

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