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According to Walter Pitt 's 1996 book, spirituals are a musical form that is indigenous and specific to the religious experience African slaves and their descendants in the United States. Pitts said that they were a result of the interaction of music and religion from Africa with music and religion of European origin.
Spirituals. 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.
Overview. Spirituals are African American religious songs that evolved in the context of slavery primarily in the Southern United States. They were a mechanism for survival – a potent example of how humans can endure the worst of conditions. Spirituals combine elements of European American religious music with African musical characteristics.
- Summary
- Origin
- Musical style
- Songs
- Quotes
- Influence
- Recordings
- Characteristics
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!\\...
Mar 5, 2021 · Spirituals are meditations on the triumph of the metaphysical over the physical realities of slavery. They attempt to answer profound questions: What happens to an enslaved person when she dies?
- Kaitlyn Greenidge
Spiritual, in North American white and black folk music, an English-language folk hymn. White spirituals include both revival and camp-meeting songs and a smaller number of other hymns. They derived variously, notably from the “lining out” of psalms, dating from at least the mid-17th century.
Spirituals. African-American sacred folk songs are known as anthems, hymns, spiritual songs, jubilees, gospel songs, or spirituals, though the distinctions among these terms are not precise. Spiritual song was widely used in English and American tune books from the eighteenth century, but spiritual has not been found in print before the Civil War.
