Perhaps what is needed [and apparently what that British television program failed to provide] is information on the similarities between African-American and West African/Central African music.
I specifically focus on these two regions of Africa since those were the regions from which the African ancestors of the majority of African Americans came.

Here is a quote that provide some introductory information on this subject:

"Spirituals are of two text types: sorrow songs and jubilees {some of the latter were used as "shout spirituals}....Examples of this type of spiritual [sorrow songs] are "Nobody Knows The Trouble I See", "What A Tryin' Time"; "I'm Troubled In Mind", I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray", "Go Down Moses", "Were You There," and "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child".

Jubilees express joyful expectation of a better life in the future. Songs such as "Goin to Shout All Over God's Heaven", "Little David Play On Your Harp", King Jesus is A-Listenin', In that Great Gittin Up Mornin", and When de Saints Fo marchin' In' express jubilation for present and future blessings.

The kinship of these early spirituals to African performance is striking. The song 'Steal Away,' for example, has short phrases taht repeat, grow, and make larger melodic structures and uses multimeter, pendular thirds, and descending phrase endings.It also makes use of the 'implication, euphemism, symbol, allegory,and secret [that] is a part of the everyday technique of oral expression' in Africa {Zahan [1970] 1979, 114}. Furthermore, any performance of 'Steal Away' will conform to many of Lomax's }1975, 46}characteristics of the African song style that I quoted in chapeter 1: it will be vocally non-tense, textually quite repetitious, lacking in melodic embellishment, non-complex, relaxed, cohesive, multileveled, and leader-oriented-"distintly African" according to Lomax. In this spiritual, as in most others, we see the African retentions that effect the continuity that is characteristic of the elaboration of black music in America."
{Samuel A Floyd, "The Power of Black Music, p. 42}

-snip-

I would also take this opportunity to say that there appears to be an underlying assumption that there Gaelic people and Africans had no historical connections. Anthropological evidence confirms that all people originally came from Africa. Furthermore, historical documents show that prior to early contact with Europeans in the 15th century or so, Black Africans were not people who remained locked in their own geographical areas, failing to travel or make any contact with non-African peoples. Couldn't it be possible that the presence of call & response patterned singing in Gaelic music came from this ancient and not so ancient contact?

For those interested in reading about Black Africans' presence in Europe and the Middle East and Black Africans' profound influence on the cultures of Europe and the Middle East, let me suggest the following three books:

Frank M. Snowden Jr., "Blacks In Antiquity-Ethiopians In The
Greco-Roman Experience" {Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1970}

Ivan Van Sertima, editor "African Prsence in Early Europe"
{New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 1988}

Frank M. Snowden, Jr, "Before Color Prejudice-The Ancient Vuew of Blacks" {Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1983}



Azizi