LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Spirituals: African Americans
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Spirituals are now one of the best-known forms of American music. Major writers of spirituals include the black composers Harry Thacker Burleigh, William Dawson, and Hall Johnson. Such black singers as Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes, Mahalia Jackson, Paul Robeson, and William Warfield helped make spirituals popular.
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The power of African American prison spirituals is without equal. If it were not for the work of a few intrepid ethnomusicologists these songs would have vanished from the collective memory of American music. Fortunately Dr. Harry Oster travelled through Louisiana in the early 1960's and recorded this music before it vanished from the tradition. Most of these tracks were released in the 1960's on LP. Now, for the first time, they are available on CD with 9 tracks that have never been commercially available. The legendary singer and guitarist Robert Pete Williams is heard on several of these raw and emotive cuts.
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African American spirituals are one mode through which the melodies and rhythms of Africa found their way to America. Spirituals arose out of the songs the slaves would sing working in the fields on the plantations. In the fields the slaves developed a musical combination of "call and response" which becomes characteristic of gospel singing. Early spirituals acted for a number of practical functions for the slaves. Some were a mode of communication or a map to the North. Aside from these reasons, their song was a cry for freedom and salvation.
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The spirituals are the religious folk songs created and first sung by African Americans in slavery. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot;” “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho;” “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child;” “Go Down, Moses;” “Steal Away to Jesus;” “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?;” “Wade in the Water;” these are some of the best known survivors of the hundreds of remarkable religious folk songs that were created by enslaved African Americans. In fact, many Americans from all ethnic backgrounds can remember “growing up” with these songs, which were created by a circumscribed community of people in bondage but eventually came to be regarded as the first “signature” music of the new American nation. In time, the spirituals were offered as a gift to the whole world, exerting their cultural impact well into this last part of the twentieth century.
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In the first decades of the twentieth century spirituals became a standard part of the repertory for concert artists and were popularized by African American performers, among them Roland Hayes who was, according to the singer herself, Marian Anderson's "inspiration." Ms. Anderson was acquainted with Hayes, as well as with a number of composers who published spiritual arrangements, including Dett, Burleigh, Hall Johnson, and Florence Price. Ms. Anderson's vast collection of spirituals, in both published and manuscript form, testifies to the central rôle they played in her development as a concert artist.
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Philip Brunelle, founder and artistic director, leads 24 mixed-voice, MN-based VocalEssence in the "Witness" concert series—this one focused on African American spirituals and gospel music. Joining them are Moore by Four, an ensemble of Minneapolis-based jazz vocalists, and several accompanists on piano, drums and bass. 16 powerful, soulful tunes here: "Witness," "Hush, Somebody's Callin' My Name," "Death Is Gonna Lay His Cold Icy Hands On Me," the upbeat "Walk Together, Children," the powerful a cappella hymn "Were You There," the Moses Hogan-arranged "Elijah Rock," the Jester Hairston-arranged "In Dat Great Gittin' Up Mornin'," "Go Where I Send Thee," "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and the Michael Abels-arranged title tune, "What a Mighty God." This is a wonderful collection of spirituals and Gospel tunes, authentic and sung with soul and spirit by one of the best Choruses (and jazz ensembles) on the planet. Great stuff!
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