Where'd We Get Spirituals We Know Today?

Subject: RE: Where'd We Get Spirituals We Know Today?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 25 Jan 07 - 03:03 PM

This thread is part of the African-American Spirituals Permathread project at Mudcat. It's not a permathread itself, but I may lift and edit some posts from this thread into that permathread.

I am NOT asking for specific bibliographic information-- book lists-- or specific sources. We already have those. I'm looking for the general categories from which one has gleaned some small part of the thousands of songs that slaves in the US slavery era indicate were created, on the spot, as a routine part of daily life in work, play, and religious life.

1. One place I got the spirituals I sing has been from the shared memories of African Americans whose recent ancestors (grandmothers, great-aunts) passed along songs they remembered from their earlier lives. These songs have sometimes been passed along the chain of memory entirely in sound-- have never had their texts or musical notation written down until they landed here at Mudcat as a transcription effort from a recording.

2. Another place I have gotten quite a few has been from recordings by African American operatic singers who have learned the songs from sheet music created by African American composers/arrangers.... usually, as I understand the provenance record, songs these composers or arrangers have recalled from sources such as I describe in 1, above. When talking to one such artist a couple of years ago, I was surprised and discomfited to realize that in a way, I knew more about the spirituals heritage than did the very talented, expressive African American man to whom I was speaking. The folk process had ended before he got to it-- his whole basis for the material was note-perfect learning from sheet music, with piano accompaniment. The generations intervening between his childhood, and slavery times, had stopped passing on the old music. (I have now had this interesting and awkward experience several times with other people.)

3. Sheet music created as transcriptions of songs collected in the field during and/or shortly after the slavery period, when a few white folks realized there was music of artistic and/or financial value in what they'd had an opportunity to hear (such as the Allen Slave Songs body of material). These are anologous to 4, below.

4. Field recordings of remembered material (see 1 above), a generation or more after slavery times, such as the Lomax material at the Library of Congress which consists of recordings and written notes from their visits with individuals in the southern states.

5. Hymnal sheet music based on any of the above.

6. When tunes, whole songs, lyrics, or fragments find their way back into the folk process by dint of folkies :~) and you pick up one you can further folk-process yourself, with or without a known connection to their possible origin as spirituals.

7. When tunes, whole songs, lyrics, or fragments are found to be alive and well in children's rhymes, games, playsongs, or jump-rope chants, though their possible origin as spirituals may no longer be connected to the transmission.

8. Texts, tunes, modes, or structures in blues (country blues and/or urban/electric blues).

9. Gospel music of any time or sub-genre where a text or tune can be traced back to relationship with spirituals.

10. Oldtime, early-country, or cowboy songs where the modality may have shifted to the major scale, but the text, tune pattern, etc. can be traced back to relationship with spirituals..... where the folk process has been parallel to the folk process of an authentic spirituals-sounding approach but is no longer bound my the melodic or form conventions of that genre (but you can always put it back to the minor mode and verse pattern).

11. Minstrel songs poking "fun" at black folk (by white or African American composers and/or performers) that may have been based on a specific spiritual.

12. How could I forget recordings of early barbershop quartets that standardized harmonies formerly improvised in spirituals sung during slave times.

13. Dance music.... (need more information)

14. Preaching, particularly pentecostal-style preaching, where what had been a sung spiritual is now used in a singsong/testifying tone to deliver a whole lyric or fragment within or at the beginning or end of a sermon. I have heard this in southern Black church recordings as well as White.

15. Parodies where the original text is gone or adapted but the modality and structure remain, from which a spiritual can be deduced/rewritten.

16. Folkmusic books and recordings where songs that originated as spirituals are later attributed as "traditional."

===============

What these modes of transmission have in common is that a folk process has been underway in some form or another, and that at some point a "definitive" version of some specific songs came to be widely accepted as "the right way" to do them. From that point on, the folk process has stopped or slowed so that some songs have become frozen into today's culture without encouraging the genre's original creativity to continue forward in time.

Your comments?

~Susan

Subject: RE: Where'd We Get Spirituals We Know Today?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 25 Jan 07 - 08:34 PM

WYSIWYG, I don't think I know what you are after.

How do 'categories and modes of transmission' for spirituals differ from, say, c&m t for folksongs of Appalachia and Ozarks or Fall Line or Tyneside or-

Important is the influence of European musicians such as Antonin Dvorák, who lectured and promoted Af-Am music, and who stated to New York reporters, "I am now satisfied that the future music of this country [USA] must be founded upon what are called the Negro melodies."
The English composer Frederick Delius, and other classical musicians, also promoted Black music.
Harry T. Burleigh, mentoreded by Dvorák, made arrangements of spirituals such as "Deep River" which caught the public eye. Interest and the collection of Af-Am music was spurred by his contributions.

Perhaps some of what you seek is here:
Sweet Chariot: the Story of the Spirituals.
http://ctl.du.edu/spirituals/Performing/choral.cfm
Sweet Chariot

(Joe, besides Fisk (1871) don't forget the Hampton Singers (1873) and several other groups that did the same post-Civil War. Almost a 'cottage industry.')

Subject: RE: Where'd We Get Spirituals We Know Today?
From: Scoville
Date: 26 Jan 07 - 11:50 AM

I'm still not clear on what is wanted.

I'm going to give this a shot and I apologize in advance if I'm utterly and completely off-base.

1) Most of the few spirituals I know came from either recordings, from basic arrangements found in songbooks (i.e. melody notation and chords but minimal interpretation), and from friends. While my family's taste in religious music falls mainly along the lines of country gospel (simple and structured) and we certainly do not improvise to the extent that the original singers might have, we don't seem to be particularly stuck on any one commercial recording of a given song. Often we've heard six or seven versions of it and pick what we like, then polish it out to suit our tastes. Also, the recordings from which we learn things are often not the ones that are most commercially popular, so even if our version does resemble a recorded one, it may not be the "definitive" one.

2) I'm not sure what to say about the "continuing revelation" of gospel because what I think of when I think of these sorts of songs is more or less a museum-piece genre of music. Not dead, of course, but essentially passed by and replaced by R&B-style gospel or those epic "praise songs". Sorry, but I feel a little like this is analogous to asking about the state of Victorian sentimental waltzes or ragtime--there are probably people out there writing new things in that style, but they are the exception rather than the rule and the genre is small enough that it's kind of hard to analyze in relation to most contemporary music.

Subject: RE: Where'd We Get Spirituals We Know Today?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Jan 07 - 05:12 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Where'd We Get Spirituals We Know Today?
From: Azizi
Date: 26 Jan 07 - 06:31 PM

I grew up hearing old African American spirituals sung at church & at home.

My home church in Atlantic City, New Jersey had two choirs which were made up of women and men. Whether it was meant to be this way or not, these choirs competed for members and they competed for the affections and support of the church's congregation. One choir,"The Gospel Chorus", was known for singing athemns and spirituals, many of which were slow tempos.
The other choir, "The Spiral Chorus", was known for singing "gospel songs", many of which were uptempo. Most members of the Gospel Chorus were passed forty years of age. Most members of the Spiral Chorus were in the twenties or older. In addition to singing in our church, these choirs would give concerts that featured their singing and might also feature other choirs whose repertoire of songs were similar to theirs. Partly because my mother was a member of the Spiral Chorus, I favored this choir. But I still heard and learned the songs sung by the Gospel Chorus.

Many years have passed, and so too have many members of both choirs. The Gospel Choir is no more, but members of the Spiral Chorus are part of a mass choir that sings mostly older gospel songs, and anthems such as "The Hallelujah Chorus". Much less often, that choir sings African American spirituals like "We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder". Another choir formed to take the place of what was the Spiral Chorus role of introducing & performing contemporary gospel songs at Sunday services. That choir, the "Voices of Hope" sing to the accompaniment of the piano, organ, electric guitar, and snare drums. In my childhood, teen years, and young adult years, a guitar and drums would never ever have been played in my church, which prides itself in being "middle class" Baptist.

In my opinion, a number of those contemporary gospel songs that the Voices of Hope and other choirs, and vocalists sing, evolve from or are built on and are re-workings of old time spirituals. In that sense, the old time spirituals are not dead, but are still alive and well.

**

In answer to the thread question, YouTube is one way we get spirituals, and gospel songs we know today.

If you can get YouTube, consider for example this contemporary version of "Balm In Gilead". The female singer, Karen Clark-Sherrod, is a member of the highly respected gospel singing group, The Clark Sisters.

There Is A Balm In Gilead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKEqCWOHaDE

Also, consider this contemporary gospel song called "The Presence of The Lord Is Here" {performed by Byron Cage}:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QyVPKbZzww

That song uses an open ended format in a similar manner to the open ended style of old times spirituals. It starts with the verse
"The presence of the Lord is here/the presence of the Lord is here/I feel it in the atmosphere/the presence of the Lord is here". Then after the soloist says some preaching words, he lines the next verse by saying "the power". The choir then sings "The power of the Lord is here/the power of the Lord is here/I feel Him the atmosphere/the power of the Lord is here."

There is a second part of the song and then the vocalist goes back to lining "the blessings" and the choir sings "The blessing of the Lord is here" etc. Of course, there's more to this song. Its complexity is reflective of the complexity of the 21st century but {and} it still retains some down home flavor of the old time spirituals and "newer" old time gospel songs.

If you can get YouTube, check these videos out. You might like them.