LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Spirituals: Songs
built 613 days ago
Spirituals were little known outside the Southern States until after the blacks were freed from slavery. In 1867, William Francis Allen, Lucy McKim Garrison, and Charles Pickard Ware published a collection of black music called Slave Songs of the United States.
Source:
The composers of Spirituals are unknown. They are a genuine folk music. Because the songs became an oral tradition, the words varied from region to region when song leaders found it necessary to ad-lib lines they had forgotten.
Source:
Some consider the spirituals' melody vastly superior to its verse. They reason that these songs were composed when the Negro’s lack of education forced him to concentrate on rhythm and harmony, the inherent parts of his native genius that needed no formal schooling for expression. Slaves of the Southern plantation relied on Bible text for verse themes. In the story of the children of Israel in bondage in Egypt, they found a striking symbol of their own status. The famous “Go Down, Moses” is an excellent example of this analogy. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” has a touch of the whimsy in the invitation to the chariot of Elias to swing low, so that the soul may enjoy its ride to heaven.
Source:
[T]oo, in many instances did the spirituals themselves. Spirituals sometimes provided comfort and eased the boredom of daily tasks, but above all, they were an expression of spiritual devotion and a yearning for freedom from bondage. Songs like "Steal Away (to Jesus)", or "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" raised unexpectedly in a dusty field, or sung softly in the dark of night, signalled that the coast was clear and the time to escape had come. The River Jordan became the Ohio River, or the Mississippi, or another body of water that had to be crossed on the journey to freedom. “Wade in the Water” contained explicit instructions to fugitive slaves on how to avoid capture and the route to take to successfully make their way to freedom.[1] Leaving dry land and taking to the water was a common strategy to throw pursuing bloodhounds off one's trail. “The Gospel Train”, and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” all contained veiled references to the Underground Railroad, and Follow the Drinking Gourd contained a coded map to the Underground Railroad.
Source:
The ecstatic experience influenced the spirituals in a number of ways. One was religious dancing, known as the shout. Because slaves were forbidden to use instruments, particularly drums, they used spirituals to accompany the shouts. These spirituals reflected the unflagging pulse and rhythmic energy in the shout. Spiritual ecstasy was ... expressed in obbligatos and other vocables improvised from cries, hollers, and moans uttered by the slaves while in the throes of the ecstatic experience. "Call and response" structure was particularly useful in the spirituals that accompanied the shouts because the leader could keep the song going as long as was necessary for the ecstatic experience to run its course.
Source:
The choir sings primarily written arrangements of the spirituals. Many of these arrangements have become part of the standard choral concert repertoire. They include the work of William L. Dawson, Jester Hairston, Moses Hogan, John Work, Hall Johnson, Undine Smith Moore and Alice Parker. Additionally, the choir is singing new arrangements written specifically for the choir which attempt to bring back a more basic form, nearer to the style in which the songs were sung a century or more ago. This "minimalist" style is part of an objective to make these songs more accessible to a greater number of people and re-discover the earlier forms that so effectively moved people worldwide toward this music and the spirit from which it was born.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Songs