From Previous Posting on related thread, Sept. 5, '01:

Subject: RE: Spirituals Posted at Mudcat From: Uncle Jaque Date: 05-Sep-01 - 10:22 PM

I get the impression that the "Spiritual" genre of musical expression was typically spontanious, constantly evolving, and interwoven with other forms of hymns, gospel and even popular secular music. That, combined with a tendancy to be orally transmitted rather than written down or published in the early years make them somewhat challenging to collect.

I have a reprint of "Slave Songs" and have seen various articles in "Harper's Weekly" and similar periodicals from the 1870's in which white musicians - probably during the Civil War - heard these songs being sung down South and recognizing their musical and cultural significance, tried to transcribe and preserve them as best they could. Somebody from within the Black American Southern culture probably has published some of this music, but I'm not aware of any - certainly not before the 1880's, at least, when the "Spiritual" tradition seems to have been evolving strongly toward the "Blues".

It seems that some early recording and "collection" was done in the 1930's by the WPA from some of the elderly, rural Blacks around Virginia & Tenn. who remembered some of the old Spirituals, and there seems to have been a subsequent revival of sorts when some of them were put out on albums. During the Folk Revival of the 1960's quite a few Folk Artists adapted and recorded some Spirituals successfully, and I'm glad to see continuing interest in them... but as I said, digging the really old ones out from obscurity can be considerably more difficult than collecting "Euro-American" works of the same period.

I recently recorded an album on which was an arrangement of "Old Ship Of Zion"; a version of it was found in "Southern Harmony" of 1835, another in a Methodist Hymnal, and again in that collection of "Negro Spirituals" from the 1870's. They were all different although obviously related, suggesting that some of these tunes were likely "borrowed" and "shared" back and forth between races, cultures, and denomonations. Remember, back then it was not uncommon for songwriters to wander around the countryside or hang around in local taverns listening for local ditties. When they heard one they liked, they jotted it down in a notebook and pretty soon a song bearing a strong resemblance would be published under his name in Boston of New York... Just where they started or by who may never really be known.