A type of folksong that originated in American revivalist activity between 1740 and the close of the 19th century. The term is derived from the biblical ‘spiritual songs’, a designation used in early publications to distinguish the texts from metrical psalms and hymns of traditional church usage.
JAMES C. DOWNEY (I), PAUL OLIVER (II)
The category ‘white spiritual’ includes the folk hymn, the religious ballad and the camp-meeting spiritual, which is the counterpart of the black spiritual and shares with it certain musical elements, symbolism and probably (in part, at least) a common origin. This extensive genre was unnoticed in the USA until George Pullen Jackson, a professor of German at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, published White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands (1933), the first of a series of studies that documented its existence both in oral tradition and in published form in the shape-note tune books of rural communities (see Shape-note hymnody). The existence of the spirituals among English Primitive Methodists was described by Anne Gilchrist (1927).
The folk hymn was defined by Lowens (introduction to Wyeth, 1813) as ‘basically a secular folktune which happens to be sung to a religious text’. The religious ballad, with a narrative text, may be similarly described. Folk hymns were the first spirituals to appear in print in the USA. Following the religious revival in the early 18th century called the Great Awakening, which was led by George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, James Davenport and others, converts from Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches formed ‘new light’ and ‘new side’ churches while remaining within the organized denominations. Their musical expression was confined principally to settings of Isaac Watts’s hymn and psalm texts. A more radical group of converts called ‘Separatists’ formed independent congregations. In New England they eventually merged with another disenfranchised sect, the Baptists, and it was in this religious tradition that the earliest folk-hymn texts and music originated (see Baptist church music, §2).
Separatist Baptists believed that their musical texts, like their religious expression, should be intensely personal, exuberant, experiential and free from literary and doctrinal restraints. James Davenport, an early Separatist evangelist, published a text in 1742 that was a prototype:
Then
should my soul with angels feast
On joys that always last
Blest be my God, the God of Joy
Who gives me here a taste.
John Leland (1754–1841), a Baptist minister, wrote (1799):
Come
and taste along with me
Consolation running free
From my Father’s wealthy throne
Sweeter than the honeycomb.
Publications containing texts of Separatist Baptist hymns began to appear in the 1780s in the frontier areas of New England. The most popular was Joshua Smith’s Divine Hymns or Spiritual Songs for the Use of Religious Assemblies and Private Christians (c1784, 2/1793), which contains hymns by Watts and the English evangelicals but also includes texts of American folk origin. Some have added refrains and tag lines, the principal characteristics of the camp-meeting spiritual of the early 19th century.
The tunes used for the early texts are much more difficult to document. The first reliable source is The Christian Harmony (1805) by Jeremiah Ingalls, a singing master and composer in the style of William Billings and Andrew Law. He included among his fuging-tunes and set-pieces a number of melodies that were popular among his Baptist neighbours, harmonized in the style of the New England composers. The principal feature of the melodies of Ingalls and the many compilers who followed him is their relationship to secular folktunes of the British Isles (see Klocko, 1978). Some can be identified as appropriations of entire melodies, while others are clearly related in contour, intervallic motifs, ornamentation and musical form. The tunes are based on scales other than the conventional heptatonic major and minor, and ‘gapped scales’ are frequently found (ex.1). They exist in both oral and printed forms.
Revivalist converts were encouraged to ‘testify’ or ‘witness’ in their singing to the joy that religion had brought them. Some recounted their experiences in narrative, giving rise to a related form called the ‘religious ballad’. Examples are Wayfaring Stranger, Romish Lady and Wicked Polly. These ballads became a means of witnessing to and teaching the young. Printed examples of the genre first appeared in Anna Beeman’s Hymns on Various Subjects (1792) and in John Peak’s compilation A New Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs … Some Entirely New (1793). The following example from Peak is typical:
I
hear the gospel’s joyful sound
An organ I shall be
To sound aloud redeeming love
And sinner’s misery.
The religious ballads are the white spirituals most closely related to secular folktunes. Jackson transcribed many of the ballads found in oral tradition for Spiritual Folk-Songs of Early America (1937), Down-East Spirituals, and Others (1943) and Another Sheaf of White Spirituals (1952), and related them to specific secular tune families. Ingalls and John Wyeth, whose Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second appeared in 1813, provided conclusive evidence that the early converts drew on their knowledge of folk and popular tunes to give musical expression to their new religious feeling. An example from The Christian Harmony of secular music appropriated for a religious text is Christ the Appletree set to Handel’s Quick March, a popular fife tune of the 18th century (ex.2). The practice of borrowing from the secular tradition was not unknown in previous religious movements, and it continued in the USA as the principal characteristic of the music heard in later camp meetings and in the urban revivals of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The camp-meeting spiritual is closely related to the folk hymn but is characterized by simplicity, frequent repetition, refrains and tag lines. Its music is related to existing folktunes, but is not entirely derivative. It resulted from a new wave of revivalistic activity beginning in 1800 in the areas of pioneer settlement (the Great Revival).
The camp meeting, an open-air religious service lasting several days, brought together thousands of settlers of all denominations. At similar Baptist services as early as 1770 hymns with added refrains were sung, although James McGready was credited with organizing the first camp meeting in 1800 in Logan County, Kentucky. Diversity of belief and practice was secondary to the religious fervour that permeated the preaching, singing, baptisms and Communion rites. The event was primarily social, giving settlers a release from the isolation and hardship that characterized their daily lives; it provided occasions for religious frenzy, fed by evangelists of all persuasions and by the constant singing in the encampment. Out of this came the camp-meeting spiritual, directly prompted by the emotional fervour of the participants, and as varied in texts and tunes as the diverse religious practices represented in the meeting.
Within the camp, particularly in the southern states, blacks, both slaves and freemen, mingled with whites, but conducted their religious meetings separately. The similarity of texts and tunes between white and black spirituals indicates a free exchange of musical elements and influences.
In the camp meetings texts by Watts and texts from the collections of Joseph Hart and John Rippon, as well as from Smith’s Divine Hymns, were fragmented and supplied with tag lines and refrains. Tunes of the simplest order were improvised by the congregations. Participants drew on the musical resources of their denomination but the religious expression of the Separatists, now institutionalized among Baptists, prevailed. Methodists, who were newcomers to the frontier, readily adopted the practice. The musical characteristics of the camp-meeting spiritual were those that made it amenable to improvisation, extension and variation, and to rapid assimilation by large bodies of people limited in reading ability, musical performance and cultural experience. Repetition of text was one characteristic:
Where,
O where are the Hebrew Children?
Where, O where are the Hebrew Children?
Where, O where are the Hebrew Children?
Safe in the promised land.
Refrains were often added to existing texts:
Whither
goest thou, pilgrim stranger
Passing through this darksome vale
Knowest thou not ’tis full of danger
And will not thy courage fail
I am bound for the kingdom
Will you go to glory with me
Halleluiah, praise the Lord.
Tag lines were frequently inserted into a couplet:
I
know that my Redeemer lives,
Glory hallelujah!
What comfort this sweet sentence gives,
Glory hallelujah!
A couplet was sometimes followed by a refrain:
O
when shall I see Jesus
And dwell with him above
And shall hear the trumpet sound
In that morning
And from the flowing fountain
Drink everlasting love
And shall hear the trumpet sound
In that morning
The repetition, tag lines, and refrains provided for participation in ‘call-and-response’ performances between evangelist and people. The most popular forms were four-line arrangements of AAAB, and the couplet with tag line, A (tag) B (tag). Refrains followed similar arrangements, and often used the melody of the verse or a new tune with a higher range.
The texts of the camp-meeting spiritual appeared first in pocket ‘songsters’ without music, compiled by ministers and enterprising laymen and sold on the site. Camp meetings became a community tradition in the 19th century and still occur in isolated areas of the southern states. After the Civil War (1861–5) there were only two significant publications for camp meetings: the Revival and Camp Meeting Minstrel (1867), popularly known as ‘The Perkinpine Songster’, and Joseph Hillman’s The Revivalist (c1868).
The tunes of the folk hymns, religious ballads and spirituals persist in the rich oral tradition of the southern states (described by Jackson, Cecil Sharp and others in the early 20th century) and they retain much of the modal character of the original secular melodies. Printed sources of the folk hymns and spirituals are the shape-note tune books of the rural singing-school choral tradition. Wyeth’s Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second appears to be a link between the music of the New England Separatists and the shape-note singers. The Repository was the first in a series of tune books used by itinerant music teachers who composed works in the style of Billings and others, and in imitation of their models added treble, alto and bass parts to the melodies they transcribed from common usage (ex.3, taken from the Original Sacred Harp, Denson Revision, where the tune is in the tenor part and is in the ‘natural minor’ or A mode; the harmonization – even the alto part added in the early 20th century – stays within this modal scheme, and emphasizes two-note rather than triadic harmony, particularly open 5ths and octaves).
Eskew (1966) traced the history of these publications, identified the folk hymns and spirituals in each, and described their movement into the southern states. In particular, he documented the work of Ananias Davisson, who published the Kentucky Harmony (1816, suppl. 1820). William Walker’s The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion (1835) and Benjamin F. White and E.J. King’s The Sacred Harp (1844) are especially rich in folk hymns and spirituals. Levi C. Myers’s Manual of Sacred Music (1853) shows a strong preference for camp-meeting songs.
An attempt to publish camp-meeting songs and other music for revivals in the cities of the northern states was made by Joshua Leavitt with The Christian Lyre (1830), but white spirituals never became popular in urban areas. From 1875 the main impetus of the revival movement was provided by the urban crusades of Dwight L. Moody and Ira Sankey and, later, the work of Billy Sunday and Homer Rodeheaver. The musical products of this era of revivalism, gospel hymns and other songs (see Gospel music, §I), were popular in style, and, in many instances, their music was taken directly from contemporary theatre and parlour songs.
A revival of interest in folk hymns and spirituals among choral directors and composers in the mid-20th century is evident in the increased number of choral arrangements and orchestral works in which the tunes are used; and compilers of hymnals, particularly those of the Baptist and Methodist denominations, have made use of many of the tunes and texts in their publications.
All reproduced on microcard in C. Skipton, ed.: Early American Imprints (Worcester, MA, 1966)
J. Davenport: Rev’d. Mr. Davenport’s Song (Boston, 1942)
S. Occom: A Choice Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs Intended for the Edification of Sincere Christians of all Denominations (New London, CT, 1774, 3/1787/R1792 with addns)
A. Beeman: Hymns on Different Spiritual Subjects (Norwich, CT, 1792)
J. Peak: A New Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs … some Entirely New (Windsor, VT, 1793)
J. Smith and others: Divine Hymns, or Spiritual Songs for the Use of Religious Assemblies and Private Christians (Exeter, NH, 1793, enlarged 9/1799 by W. Northup)
J. Ingalls: The Christian Harmony (Exeter, NH, 1805/R)
J. Wyeth: Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second (Harrisburg, PA, 1813, 2/1820/R1964 with introduction by I. Lowens)
A. Davisson: Kentucky Harmony (Harrisonburg, VA, 1816/R)
A. Davisson: A Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony (Harrisonburg, VA, 1820, 3/1825)
J. Leavitt: The Christian Lyre (New York 1830)
W. Walker: The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion (New Haven, 1835, 3/1854/R)
B.F. White and E.J. King: The Sacred Harp (Hamilton, GA, 1844, 3/1859/R, 4/1869); ed. T.J. Denson and P. Denson as Original Sacred Harp, Denson Revision (Haleyville, AL, 1936, 4/1971)
L.C. Myers: Manual of Sacred Music (Harrisonburg, VA, 1853)
J.G. McCurry: The Social Harp (Philadelphia, 1855); ed. D.W. Patterson and J.F. Guest (Athens, GA, 1973)
Revival and Camp Meeting Minstrel (Philadelphia, 1867)
J. Hillman: The Revivalist (Troy, NY, 1868, enlarged 1872)
R.E. Crawford, ed.: The Core Repertory of Early American Psalmody, RRAM, xi–xii (1984)
J. Warrington: Short Titles of Books Relating to or Illustrating the History and Practice of Psalmody in the United States, 1620–1820 (Philadelphia, 1898/R)
A. Gilchrist: ‘The Folk Element in Early Revival Hymns and Tunes’, JFSS, viii (1927–31), 61–95
G.P. Jackson: White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands (Chapel Hill, NC, 1933/R)
A.M. Buchanan: Folk Hymns of America (New York, 1938)
G.P. Jackson: White and Negro Spirituals (New York, 1943/R)
G. Chase: America’s Music, from the Pilgrims to the Present (New York, 1955, 3/1987/R)
J.N. Sims: The Hymnody of the Camp-Meeting Tradition (diss., Union Theological Seminary, NY, 1960)
P.J. Revitt: The George Pullen Jackson Collection of Southern Hymnody (Los Angeles, 1964)
H.L. Eskew: Shape-Note Hymnody in the Shenandoah Valley, 1816–1860 (diss., Tulane U., New Orleans, 1966)
D.D. Bruce: And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain-Folk Camp-Meeting Religion 1800–1845 (Knoxville, TN, 1974)
B.C. Parker: The Folk Hymns of John Wyeth’s ‘Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second’: a Historical and Analytical Study (thesis, William Carey College, 1976)
C.D. Scribbling: Joshua Levitt’s ‘The Christian Lyre’: a Historical Evaluation (thesis, William Carey College, 1976)
B.E. Cobb: The Sacred Harp: a Tradition and its Music (Athens, GA, 1978)
R.H. Hulan: Camp-Meeting Spiritual Folksongs: Legacy of the ‘Great Revival in the West’ (diss., U. of Texas, Austin, 1978)
D.G. Klocko: Jeremiah Ingall’s ‘The Christian Harmony or Songster’s Companion (1805)’ (diss., U. of Michigan, 1978)
E.J. Lorenz: Glory Hallelujah! the Story of the Camp-Meeting Spiritual (Nashville, TN, 1980)
Black spirituals constitute one of the largest bodies of American folksong that survived into the 21st century, and are probably the best known. They are principally associated with African-American church congregations of the Deep South, and the earlier, more informal and sometimes clandestine gatherings of blacks in ‘praise houses’ and ‘brush arbour’ meetings.
2. African and European sources.
3. Textual and musical characteristics.
Although black American singing, whether in the fields or in the churches, was remarked upon by many writers in the 18th century and the early 19th, few commented upon the songs in detail. The English actress Fanny Kemble, wife of a slave-owner, noted in her diary in 1839 ‘how they all sing in unison, having never, it appears, attempted or heard anything like part-singing’ (p.159). She described how at a funeral ‘the whole congregation uplifted their voices in a hymn, the first high wailing notes of which – sung all in unison … sent a thrill through all my nerves’ (p.140). She did not, however, note the words she heard. In the early 1860s Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in command of a black regiment, carefully wrote down the texts of songs he heard his men sing. Some of these were later included in his published memoirs of 1870, for example:
I
know moon-rise, I know star-rise,
Lay dis body down.
I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight,
To lay dis body down. (p.209)
This form was typical of a great many spirituals: an alternating line and refrain which permitted endless extemporisation (see I,2, above). To the soldiers such songs were, he wrote, ‘more than a source of relaxation; they were a stimulus to courage and a tie to heaven’ (p.221). In 1867 William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware and Lucy McKim Garrison published their Slave Songs of the United States, a collection that included some of the spirituals best known and still surviving in the late 20th century, including Old ship of Zion, Lay this body down, Michael, row the boat ashore and We will march through the valley, as well as many lesser-known songs. The authors confirmed the absence of part-singing but added, ‘yet no two appear to be singing the same thing’. The lead singer, who would frequently improvise, was generally supported by ‘basers’ who provided a vocal groundwork and interpolations. The singing they heard abounded in ‘slides from one note to another, and turns and cadences not in articulated notes’. In presenting their collection they regretted their inability to convey in notation ‘the odd turns made in the throat, and the curious rhythmic effect produced by single voices chiming in at different irregular intervals’.
There was much speculation, especially among the early commentators on black spirituals, about possible African elements in the songs. Allen and others considered them ‘to have become imbued with the mode and spirit of European music – often, nevertheless, retaining a distinct tinge of their native Africa’ (1867). Wallaschek in Primitive Music (1893) denied that the songs had African elements; but he had not been to the USA and had not heard black spirituals sung. Krehbiel, after analysing some 500 collected spirituals, contended that they were essentially black American in character and origin. Few have questioned the African nature of the plantation ‘ring shout’, a shuffling circular dance to chanting and hand-clapping that accompanied the more joyous spirituals. Often viewed with alarm white Southerners, ring shouts were still being performed in the 1930s. Their ecstatic and trance-inducing nature suggested links with African custom. Other elements that might be evidence of African retention in this type of spiritual, such as improvised antiphonal singing, shouting, chanting, stamping and the involuntary spasms of ‘possessed’ members of the congregations, have also been observed in fundamentalist white churches, and may be related to the highly emotional forms of religious expression developed in the Great Awakening of the early 18th century. The Englishman Isaac Watts and others published large numbers of hymns during this period, which were learnt by ‘lining out’ (the intoning of a line by a precentor and its repetition by the congregation). The 1820 edition of Watts’s hymns had wide circulation throughout the southern USA and ‘Dr. Watts songs’ were popular among black Americans. The closeness of lining out to the traditional African work song form of leader-and-chorus antiphonal singing undoubtedly contributed to the popularity of this style. Many of the hymn texts were used, in whole or in part, as the basis for spirituals.
Doubts have been raised concerning the origin of the black spiritual as a genre. Lovell (1972) contended, as had Krehbiel, that the spirituals were the innovations of black slaves, but evidence was adduced by White (1928), Johnson (1930) and Jackson (in several publications) to support a common source for both the black spiritual and the white in the camp meetings and the white Southern rural churches. Jackson, in particular, argued for white origins, pointing to many black spirituals as variants of songs published earlier in white tune books, notably those of the shape-note tradition (ex.4). But priority in publication is hardly proof of origin where folk music is concerned, especially when one body of the music in question is that of a group whose illiteracy was enforced by law. It would seem more historically accurate to assume that the exchange between black and white traditions was considerable and that the influence was mutual. Slaves were often permitted in the white churches where they heard the same services as their owners; and whites heard slaves singing spirituals on the levees, the plantations, the riverboats, and even in work gangs.
Many spirituals are suffused with melancholy and have been called ‘sorrow songs’. Intensely moving slow spirituals such as Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, He never said a mumblin’ word, Were you there when they crucified my Lord? and Nobody knows the trouble I seen reveal the singers’ own trials and identification with the suffering of Jesus Christ. The theme of death runs through many spirituals; some, like Toll the bell, angel, I jus’ got over, suggest a spirit that has already left this earth. Other spirituals, however, sometimes called ‘jubilees’, are quick in tempo, highly rhythmic and often syncopated; they are performed in a call-and-response manner and are settings of more positive, optimistic or hortatory texts. Among these are Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel?, I an’ Satan had a race, Blow your trumpet, Gabriel and Git on board, chillun. Some writers (e.g. Fisher, 1953) maintain that virtually all spirituals were codified songs of protest. The former slave and black leader Frederick Douglass (c1817–95) wrote of singing spirituals when a slave: ‘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 heaven. We meant to reach the North, and the North was our Canaan’ (p.157). Spirituals such as Steal away, Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel? and Children, we all shall be free must have been seen as incitements to escape from bondage, while We’ll stand the storm and We shall walk through the valley in peace were reassuring to faltering spirits.
Often the imagery of the spirituals includes vivid juxtapositions of phrases and literal interpretations of metaphoric biblical texts. The book of Revelation provided an important source of images for songs. But to quote spirituals out of context tends to emphasize their naivety; it is in the course of the singing that their beauty and freshness is most apparent.
The performance of black spirituals varied from that of white spirituals in a number of ways. A significant difference was the use of microtonally flatted notes (sometimes identified as lowered 3rds, 5ths and 7ths), which were frequently arrived at by progressive shading, particularly in the singing of the extended syllables of ‘long-metre’ spirituals. Syncopation was commonly introduced by individuals or small groups of singers within a congregation, which shifted the accents by anticipating or delaying the expected note. Counter-rhythms were marked by hand-clapping and, in those denominations that permitted it, by ‘holy dancing’ (dancing without crossing the feet). Black spirituals frequently began with the chorus preceding the first verse; others alternated verses and refrain lines, which were sung by the whole congregation. Responsorial singing was common, either in reply to a line or stanza sung by the leader, or by collective singing of the second half of a line that was begun by a solo voice. Special qualities of vocal timbre, including the rasp and a shrill falsetto, enriched the sound, while interpolated cries of ‘Glory!’ and other words or phrases of encouragement or affirmation made the spiritual far more varied in performance than some collections suggest.
The publication of collections in the 1860s increased interest in black spirituals. But they were brought to an international audience through the appearances from 1871 of the Jubilee Singers from Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee. The group’s purpose was to raise funds for the university, which was intended for black students, but they were unsuccessful until they included a number of spirituals in their programmes. Thereafter they performed concert arrangements of spirituals both in the USA and in Europe, and awakened an abiding interest in this form. The Jubilee Singers and later the Hampton Singers from the Hampton Institute in Virginia were the inspiration for Frederick J. Work, R. Nathaniel Dett, T.P. Fenner and Clarence Cameron White (who all conducted both groups) to arrange and publish their songs. From a folk form the spirituals rapidly became a part of the repertory of concert artists, cathedral choirs and even symphony orchestras. Many of the performers and composers who popularized the spirituals in concerts all over the world were black, among them Roland Hayes, Paul Robeson, William Grant Still and James Weldon Johnson. Publication ensured lasting respect for the spirituals and conservation of their words and melodies, but transcription for voice and piano, written arrangement for orchestras and the use of art-music singing techniques destroyed the spontaneity and unpredictable quality that the spiritual had had as a folk form.
Although the popularity of the spirituals on the concert platform increased during the 20th century, their appeal had already begun to wane in the black churches, and by the late 19th century gospel song began to replace the spiritual (see Gospel music, §II). The popular jubilee groups, mainly quartets, which had developed in the late 1870s, and whose successors recorded extensively in the 1920s and 30s often included spirituals among their songs. Their approach was already that of the gospel quartet: although there are detectable differences between the earlier and later phases, the relatively sophisticated arrangements performed by the quartets were far removed from the traditional forms of spiritual singing. Surviving examples of the earlier styles are to be found in the recordings of preachers and their congregations, of which many hundreds were issued, principally in the late 1920s. Among them are many instances of lining out, such as Rev. E.D. Campbell’s Come let us eat together (Vic. 35824, 1927) and I heard the voice of Jesus say on Rev. P.E. Edmonds’s There’s a Hole in the Wall (Para. 12876, 1929). ‘Long-metre’ singing of a ‘Doctor Watts’ is to be heard on Rev. J.C. Burnett’s Amazing Grace (Decca 7494, 1938), while alternating responses to a chanted solo are well represented on Rev. Gipson’s John done saw that holy number (Para. 12555, 1927). An excellent example of overlapping singing against syncopated hand-clapping is to be found in a version of Trouble don’t last always on Rev. J.M. Milton’s recording with his Atlanta congregation of A Four Day Ramble (Col. 14501, 1929). The adoption of the jubilee songs by the Sanctified churches is vigorously demonstrated in the singing of All God’s chillen got wings on Rev. F.W. McGee’s The Holy City (Vic. 21205, 1927). Later recordings by preachers and congregations were frequently of this kind. Mention should also be made of black Sacred Harp singing from shape-note books (see Shape-note hymnody). Though seldom recorded, early examples include Rejoicing on the Way by the Fa Sol La Singers, recorded in Atlanta (Col. 14656, 1931), and Bells of Love, sung virtually as a round, by the Middle Georgia Singing Convention no.1 (OK 8883, 1930).
There were fewer recordings of preachers and their congregations after 1930, and when they increased in the 1950s spirituals had been largely replaced by gospel songs. However, older forms of the spiritual survived in the remoter backwaters of black culture and particularly in the more conservative churches of the South. Many hundreds of recordings of these rural spirituals were made between 1933 and 1942 for the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress. By far the most important pockets for conservation of the early spirituals and the ring shout were in the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina, as demonstrated by Lydia Parrish in 1942. Recordings made 20 years later from this region, and from elsewhere in the South such as Georgia and Alabama, emphasize the persistence of the tradition in isolated communities unassailed by outside influences. In one example of a ring shout from Jennings, Louisiana, Run old Jeremiah (recorded by W. Brown, S. Brown and A. Coleman, AAFS L3, 1934), there is a train-like accompaniment of stamping feet. Another shout, Eli you can’t stand, was performed with hand-clapping accompaniment to chanted lead-singing by Willis Proctor and others on St. Simon’s Island (Prst. 25002, 1959).
Two singers who recorded spirituals extensively for the Library of Congress during the 1930s and early 1940s were Vera Hall and Dock Reed. Field recordings of these two a decade later included two examples of the simplest form of additive spiritual, Dead and gone and Free at last (1950, reissued on FW 4418, 1960), the latter dating from the mid-1860s. The complexity of the early shouting spirituals is suggested in Rock chair, tol’ you to rock (Rock Chariot, 1950), performed by Rich Amerson, Earthy Ann Coleman and Price Coleman at Livingston, Alabama, which includes a counter-chant sung against the main theme (FW 4418, 1960). Re-creations of the Sea Islands spiritual songs with drum, fife and banjo accompaniment were made by Bessie Jones and a mixed group, including fine versions of Before this time another year and Beulah Land (Prst, 25001, 1959).
An outstanding example of the early form of the spiritual with unison singing and moaning is Father I stretch my hands to Thee (FW 2656, 1960) performed by Jake Field, Eastman Brand and Arthur Holifield. This is one of many recordings that show the relationship between black spirituals and white hymns, since the text used was written by Charles Wesley. Several spirituals with texts by Watts were sung by John and Lovie Griffin of Perry County, Alabama, including When I can read my title clear (FW 2656, 1956). Early recordings were made of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, such as Roll Jordan roll (c1913, reissued on RBF5, 1962), and show the concert-style spiritual. Some of the better-known of these arrangements of spirituals, including those published by the Fisk Jubilee Singers themselves in 1872 and 1892, have remained as favourites in black churches where gospel song has otherwise replaced the older traditions. Versions of the concert spirituals also appear among recordings made by many leading gospel singers and groups.
Thus, although the spiritual as a folk form declined in popularity among black Americans during the 20th century because of its association with slavery, extensive collecting, recording and scholarly study have ensured that the tradition will not be lost to future generations. See also United States of America, §II, 2.
‘Grove5’ (G.P. Jackson)
McCarthyJR (‘Gospel Songs and Spirituals’, P. Oliver)
W.F. Allen, C.P. Ware and L.M. Garrison: Slave Songs of the United States (New York, 1867/R)
T.F. Seward: Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University (Nashville, TN, 1872)
T.F. Seward and G.L. White: Jubilee Songs (New York, 1884)
T.P. Fenner: Religious Folk Songs of the Negro (Hampton, VA, 1909/R)
J.W. Johnson and J.R. Johnson: The Books of American Negro Spirituals (New York, 1925–6/R)
H.W. Odum and G.B. Johnson: The Negro and his Songs (Chapel Hill, NC, 1925)
D. Scarborough: On the Trail of Negro Folk Songs (Cambridge, MA, 1925)
N.I. White: American Negro Folk-Songs (Cambridge, MA, 1928/R)
E.A. McIhenny: Befo’ de War Spirituals: Words and Melodies (Boston, 1933/R)
R.N. Dett: The Dett Collection of Negro Spirituals (Chicago, 1936)
J.W. Work: American Negro Songs (New York, 1940)
L. Parrish: Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands (New York, 1942/R)
F.A. Kemble: Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839 (New York, 1863); ed. J.A. Scott (New York, 1961/R)
T.W. Higginson: ‘Negro Spirituals’, Army Life in a Black Regiment (Boston, 1870), 197ff
F. Douglass: Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Hartford, CT, 1882/R, 2/1892)
R. Wallaschek: Primitive Music (London, 1893/R)
H.E. Krehbiel: Afro-American Folksongs: a Study in Racial and National Music (New York, 1914)
R.E. Kennedy: Mellows: a Chronicle of Unknown Singers (New York, 1925/R)
E.M. von Hornbostel: ‘American Negro Songs’, International Review of Missions, xv (1926), 748–53
G.B. Johnson: Folk Culture on St. Helena Island, South Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC, 1930/R), 117–8
G.P. Jackson: ‘Tunes of the White Man’s Spirituals Preserved in the Negro’s Religious Songs’, ‘White Man’s and Negro’s Spiritual Texts Compared’, White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands (Chapel Hill, NC, 1933/R), 242–302
M.J. Herskovits: ‘The Contemporary Scene: Africanisms in Religious Life’, The Myth of the Negro Past (New York, 1941/R), 207–60
G.P. Jackson: White and Negro Spirituals (New York, 1943/R)
M.M. Fisher: Negro Slave Songs in the United States (Ithaca, NY, 1953)
F. Ramsey jr: disc notes, Music fom the South, vi–vii: Elder Songsters, FW 2655–6 (1956)
W.H. Tallmadge: ‘Dr. Watts and Mahalia Jackson: the Development, Decline, and Survival of a Folk Style in America’, EthM, v (1961), 95–9
H. Courlander: ‘Anthems and Spirituals as Oral Literature’, Negro Folk Music U.S.A. (New York, 1963/R), 35–79
E. Southern: The Music of Black Americans: a History (New York, 1971, 2/1983)
J. Lovell: Black Song: the Forge and the Flame (New York, 1972)
E. Southern: ‘An Origin for the Negro Spiritual’, Black Scholar, iii (1972), 8–13
P.K. Maultsby: Afro-American Religious Music: 1619–1861 (diss., U. of Wisconsin, 1974)
I.V. Jackson-Brown: ‘Afro-American Sacred Songs in the Nineteenth Century: a Neglected Source’, BPM, iv (1976), 22–38
P.K. Maultsby: ‘Black Spirituals’, BPM, iv (1976), 54–69
D.J. Epstein: Sinful Tunes and Spirituals (Urbana, IL, 1977)
A. Lomax: disc notes, Georgia Sea Island Songs, NW 278 (1977)
A.J. Raboteau: Slave Religion: the ‘Invisible Institution’ in the Antebellum South (New York, 1978)
W.T. Walker: ‘Somebody’s Calling My Name’: Black Sacred Music and Social Change (Valley Forge, PA, 1979)
W. Tallmadge: Jubilee to Gospel: Commercially Recorded Black Religious Music 1921–1953, JEMF 108 (1980) [disc notes]
W. Tallmadge: ‘The Black in Jackson’s White Spirituals’, BPM, ix (1981), 139–60
D.J. Epstein: ‘A White Origin for the Black Spiritual? An Invalid Theory and How it Grew’, American Music, i/2 (1983), 53–9
P. Oliver: Songsters and Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records (Cambridge, 1984)
W.F. Pitts: Old Ship of Zion: the Afro-Baptist Ritual in the African Diaspora (New York, 1993)