LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Spirituals: African Americans
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Conclude this lesson by having students collect spirituals and other shared songs of their heritage by interviewing family members, friends, and acquaintances in their own community. Some people they talk to may know many songs; some may know only a few scattered verses. If possible, have students record the songs they collect on audiocassette and transcribe the words to create a class booklet, noting for each text where, when, and from whom they collected it, as well as any reminiscences or facts about the song that their source provides. What ethnic groups and religious denominations are represented in your collection? How diverse are the circumstances in which people learned these songs? How pervasive has the spiritual become in American society, and what do spirituals mean to Americans today?
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Listening to spirituals is to recall a time when Africans were crowded on slave ships, bound in chains, and forced to live and work in a foreign land. The spiritual became an indigenous American art form, created in the fields and slave shacks of the American south. Slaves were able to secretly communicate with each other while singing, giving them the power to console, heal and resist. "The Spirituals" eloquently recounts the bitter history from which the spiritual art form arose and goes on the road with The American Spiritual Ensemble as they gallantly try to preserve the vanishing folk songs of the slaves.
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Hearing is believing this sultry approach to traditional gospel hymns and spirituals. After years singing various genres in every venue imaginable, Amy has created an artsy, jazz-influenced expression of devotion - heartfelt, inspiring and as refreshing as the gift of her voice. Amy collaborates with brilliant musicians with whom she shares the stage at American Music Theater in Lancaster, PA, to create this inspiring and heartfelt album.
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The pseudo-spirituals which sprang up in the 1870 to 1900 period were ... a definite contribution to American music, although they were not true songs of the people as sung by them. These concerts and glee club renditions could not possibly capture the unique character of a spiritual. For had it not been composed by a congregation inspired by overpowering religious emotion with choral improvisions on the theme, which were familiar to all participants? Only a phonograph can faithfully record the unique breaks and tricks of the true spiritual.
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Turn next to examine the role spirituals played for fugitive slaves, who sometimes used them as a secret code. This chapter in the history of the spiritual is best illustrated by several episodes in the life of Harriet Tubman as recounted in Harriet, the Moses of Her People, a 19th-century biography based on interviews with this most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, which is available through EDSITEment at the Documenting the American South website. (At the website's homepage, click on "North American Slave Narratives," then click "Collection of Electronic Texts." Scroll down and click on "Bradford, Sarah H., Harriet, the Moses of Her People," then click "HTML file" for the text.)
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The very first negro spirituals were inspired by African music even if the tunes were not far from those of hymns. Some of them, which were called “shouts” were accompanied with typical dancing including hand clapping and foot tapping.
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