AFRICAN AMERICAN SPIRITUALS AS A RESPONSE TO THE TRAUMA OF ENSLAVEMENT (original) (raw)

Looking Back is Moving Forward: The Legacy of Negro Spirituals in the Civil Rights Movement

International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities, 2016

The following article explores the historical and cultural evolution of Negro Spirituals as they were revised for use in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Examining the Spirituals, "Wade in the Water" and "Oh, Freedom," this essay seeks to prove that while the legacy of slavery imbued in the Negro Spiritual did serve the purpose of reminding America of its unjust past, these songs took on new meaning in the Civil Rights Era and were put to use as a medium for communication, a salve for spiritual degradation, and above all else, a stepping stone off of which the movement intended to leap into a brighter future of equality for all. This essay challenges the claim that Negro Spirituals were too entrenched in the historical atrocities of the past to offer a revitalized message for the purposes of the CRM.

Slavery, Freedom, and the Spiritual

This is a look at the origins of the slave spiritual and its relationship with white paternalist control over the slaves' religious expression and practice as seen by the prohibition of prayer in the religious life of slaves. Helps to provide a historical perspective on the current debate surrounding the "appropriate" method of protest by blacks by revealing a historical precedent of white men controlling personal expression of black people.

Hold On Just a Little While Longer: Spirituals in the Civil Rights Movement

While the African American spiritual was born in the fields and praise houses by enslaved African Americans, it was used just as powerfully during the Civil Rights Movement. This was due to three unique characteristics: its accessibility, its adaptability, and its lineage. In this paper, I show how these aspects make the African American spiritual integral to the Civil Rights Movement.

The Spirituals in the African American Poetry Tradition

The spirituals—the verses created by enslaved African Americans on Southern plantations—are rarely categorized as lyric poetry, and often overlooked as foundational sources of the African American poetry tradition. Yet their influence on modern and contemporary African American poetry is pervasive, which calls for a reexamination of their place in African American poetry, and of the scope of the African American poetry canon itself. Based on the pattern of allusions and citations of spirituals, this fresh focus also offers an opportunity to recognize that the poems created by enslaved African Americans are more diverse and formally innovative than is often recognized. As a result, the origins of African American poetry are shown to be rooted in a body of diasporic texts that is integrally connected to methods and motives associated with avant-garde practice. In 1882, the African American Rev. Marshall W. Taylor, D.D. wrote prophetically of the spirituals, " Their influence is not done. " (Taylor 4) The spirituals, created and performed by anonymous enslaved African Americans, are essential to the foundation of the African American poetry tradition. The spirituals are among the most original artistic products created in America. Combining African survivals with the experiences of enslavement in the American South, the spirituals very likely date to the early seventeenth century as oral texts, but were not transcribed until the early nineteenth century. This brilliant body of sung verse, encompassing some 6,000 or more examples, has not been fully credited for its influence on American or African American literature and culture, or its rightful place in the lyric poetry tradition. It is a common practice for African American poetry of the last hundred years to cite and allude to spirituals, but these foundational poems are rarely considered as an integral part of the canon. Many modern and contemporary African American poems are infused with phrases, forms, themes, techniques, and rhetorical strategies of the spirituals. Through greater awareness of the spirituals' presence, function, and influence, readers can better understand both the continuities and progressions in African American poetry, including its most innovative manifestations. This pattern of marginalizing the spirituals as lyric art and a major source of textual appropriations also shows how an exclusionary and ideological canon has developed that misrepresents and limits the scope of African American poetry. This essay is intended to provide a brief introduction to a vast topic in hopes of inspiring further research and exploration. Since they first were discussed in print by musicologists, critics, scholars, clergy, slavers, seafarers, and other auditors, there has been curiosity and debate about the messages and creators of these unique songs, and what to call them. Eileen Southern explains that they were originally called " hymns, " but it quickly became clear that they differed significantly from conventional Protestant church music. (Southern 180) Reflecting the dilemma of how to describe these unusual lyrics, Slave Songs of the United States, one of the earliest compilations, uses the term " slave songs " in its title and " sperichils " in its introduction. (ii) As I have discussed in Slave Songs and the Birth of African American Poetry, nineteenth century abolitionists commonly portrayed the enslaved African Americans as free of any malice or resentment about their status, and solely concerned with Christian patience and piety. By popularizing the term " spirituals, " abolitionists reinforced the message that the enslaved people were innocent and compliant, and former slaves, after Emancipation, would bear no anger and pose no threat towards their former oppressors. (Ramey 110-11) But the word " spirituals " fails to reflect the critique and mockery in these

““My Chains are Gone”: Language of Enslavement and Freedom in Contemporary Worship Music

The Hymn, 2021

This paper will first provide an in-depth analysis of contrasting popular worship songs that rely on imagery of enslavement and freedom, noting the ways these images are contextualized and embodied both musically and lyrically by white evangelicals. It is these same white evangelical congregations that rely so heavily on the language of enslavement that are also the most reticent to admit to slavery’s lasting impact in terms of racial oppression and inequality. Using Michael Emerson and Christian Smith’s concept of the “white evangelical tool kit,” we will argue that the tendency toward individualism, antistructuralism, and ahistoricism has led White evangelical congregations to appropriate language of enslavement and freedom in correspondingly narrow and ahistoric—and therefore problematic—ways. Finally, we will end by suggesting possible strategies for White congregations to better use concepts of enslavement and freedom within their congregational songs.

The Matrix of African American Sacred Music in the 21st Century

The Journal of Traditions Beliefs, 2014

Based on the author's keynote lecture for RASHAD's Spring 2009 Religious History and Sacred Music Institute M usic frames and shapes the worship and social justice life of most African American churches. Vocal and instrumental music accompanies Christians from birth to death, during special sacred holidays, weekly worship, and in protest against injustice and oppression. Socio-cultural and religious contexts, and the sacred and secular texts, inform music: a combination of sound and silence, affecting listeners on a deeply spiritual, sensual, physical, and psychological level. From making a joyful noise to moments of contemplation, from pomp and circumstance to baptism and funerals, music is integral to corporate worship. Simultaneously, worship does not just happen on Sunday in the sanctuary. Worship is a daily activity. Just as there is no monolithic African American church, there is no monolithic or single type of African American sacred music. The styles and choices of music used to worship vary from church to church, from denominational to nondenominational environments, from Catholic to Protestant, to those faith institutions that align with but are not Christian at the core. The lived experiences and needs of the body of Christ from cradle to grave also change and inform music preferences. Issues of education, socio-cultural location, colorism, gender, and class often also shape affinity to particular musical types. Further, not only do the genres, uses, and performance styles of this sacred music vary, but they emanate upon and within diverse praying grounds, and the particular choices from venue to venue are contested. When thinking of praying grounds, imagine multiple kinds of spaces. Where does one pray? Imagine having an attitude and experience of prayer, of communicating, of dialoguing with God, where one speaks and listens in venues or spaces that are sacred-churches, hallowed land, mosques, temples, synagogues, in nature, and places individuals think of as secular-in 1 Kirk-Duggan: The Matrix of African American Sacred Music in the 21st Century