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Spirituals (also known as Negro spirituals, African American spirituals, Black spirituals, or spiritual music) is a genre of Christian music that is associated with African Americans, which merged varied African cultural influences with the experiences of being held in bondage in slavery, at first during the transatlantic slave trade and for centuries afterwards, through the domestic slave trade.
The precursor to black Gospel music is the African American spiritual, which had already been around for well over a century before Gospel music began its rise to popularity starting in the 1930s. Songs written by African American composers in the decades following emancipation that focused on biblical themes and often drew from spirituals were ...
The spiritual “My Lord, What a Morning” is an adaptation of a hymn from Allen's “A Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns.” Despite the relative freedom enjoyed by the independent black congregations, they were still controlled by white elders and subject to discrimination.
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A spiritual is a type of religious folksong that is most closely associated with the enslavement of African people in the American South. The songs proliferated in the last few decades of the eighteenth century leading up to the abolishment of legalized slavery in the 1860s. The African American spiritual (also called the Negro Spiritual) constitut...
Famous spirituals include \"Swing low, sweet chariot,\" composed by a Wallis Willis, and \"Deep down in my heart.\" The term \"spiritual\" is derived from the King James Bible translation of Ephesians 5:19: \"Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.\" The form has its roots...
Spirituals are typically sung in a call and response form, with a leader improvising a line of text and a chorus of singers providing a solid refrain in unison. The vocal style abounded in freeform slides, turns and rhythms that were challenging for early publishers of spirituals to document accurately. Many spirituals, known as \"sorrow songs,\" a...
Spirituals are also sometimes regarded as codified protest songs, with songs such as \"Steal away to Jesus,\" composed by Wallis Willis, being seen by some commentators as incitements to escape slavery. Because the Underground Railroad of the mid- nineteenth century used terminology from railroads as a secret language for assisting slaves to freedo...
As Frederick Douglass, a nineteenth century abolitionist author and former slave, wrote in his book My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) of singing spirituals during his years in bondage: \"A keen observer might have detected in our repeated singing of 'O Canaan, sweet Canaan, I am bound for the land of Canaan,' something more than a hope of reaching h...
The publication of collections of spirituals in the 1860s started to arouse a broader interested in spirituals. In the 1870s, the creation of the Jubilee Singers, a chorus consisting of former slaves from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, sparked an international interest in the musical form. The group's extensive touring schedule in the Uni...
Many recordings of these rural spirituals, made between 1933 and 1942, are housed in the American Folklife Center collections at the Library of Congress. The collection includes such gems as \"Run old Jeremiah,\" a ring shout from Jennings, Alabama recorded by J. W. Brown and A. Coleman in 1934, which has a train-like accompaniment of stamping feet...
Black spirituals vary from white spirituals in a variety of ways. Differences include the use of microtonally flatted notes, syncopation and counter-rhythms marked by handclapping in black spiritual performances. Black spiritual singing also stands out for the singers' striking vocal timbre that features shouting, exclamations of the word \"Glory!\...
A spiritual is a type of religious folksong that is most closely associated with the enslavement of African people in the American South. The songs proliferated in the last few decades of the eighteenth century leading up to the abolishment of legalized slavery in the 1860s. The African American spiritual (also called the Negro Spiritual) constitutes one of the largest and most significant ...
Black gospel music, often called gospel music or gospel, is the traditional music of the Black diaspora in the United States.It is rooted in the conversion of enslaved Africans to Christianity, both during and after the trans-atlantic slave trade, starting with work songs sung in the fields and, later, with religious songs sung in various church settings, later classified as Negro Spirituals ...
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What is spiritual music?
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“Spiritual” can mean “religious,” and that gives us a clue as to what kind of songs these are. Spirituals are religious songs. They are also called religious folk songs. Folk music is traditional music that may be passed down through generations. Black spirituals come from both African music traditions and European hymns. (Hymns are ...
