DNA of African American Spirituals (original) (raw)
Related papers
A Reception History of African American Spirituals
Foundation Theology, 2015
This is a concise look at the reception history of African American spirituals from 1867 through 2015. It stems from research into the origins of the genre in relation to the many influences in the United States from the early colonial period and the challenges encountered in their preservation. As with any other oral history, legend and myth abound. Objectivity is fleeting and is often clouded by racism and emotion. Scholarly attention, scarce since the Civil Rights Movement, has begun to untangle the threads of provenance.
2003
Turning now to Africa, we find the legend of the creation of mankind out of clay among the Shilluks of the White Nile, who ingeniously explain the different complexions of the various races by the different coloured clay out of which they were fashioned. They say that the creator Juok moulded all men of earth, and that while he was engaged in the work of creation he wandered about the world. In the land of the whites he found a pure white earth or sand, and out of it he shaped white men. Then he came to the land of Egypt and out of the mud of the Nile he made red or brown men. Lastly, he came to the land of the Shilluks, and finding their black earth he created black men out of it. The way in which he modeled men was this. He took a lump of earth and said to himself, 'I will make man, but he must be able to walk and run and go out into the fields, so I will give him two long legs, like the flamingo.' Having done so, he thought again, 'The man must be able to cultivate his millet, so I will give him two arms, one to hold the hoe, and the other to tear up the weeds.' So he gave him two arms. Then he thought again, 'The man must be able to see his millet, so I will give him two eyes.' He did so accordingly. Next he thought to himself, 'The man must be able to eat his millet, so I will give him a mouth.' And a mouth he gave him accordingly. After that he thought within himself, 'The man must be able to dance and speak and sing and shout, and for these purposes he must have a tongue.' And a tongue he gave him accordingly. Lastly-the deity said to himself, 'The man must be able to hear the noise of the dance and the speech of the great men, and for that he needs two ears.' So two ears he gave him, and sent him out into the world a perfect man.' 1 Studies of the origin and development of African descent communities, culture, and spirituality in Louisiana have been limited. This is a preliminary examination of the evidence for pre-colonial arrivals, the African slave trade to these regions, and the emergence of distinguishing African-Creole culture.
2021
This paper analyses the role that European Spiritism plays in the religious history of Brazil, Cuba and Puerto Rico and compares it to the influence of American Spiritualism on the religious landscape of New Orleans. The picture is very similar in Brazil and Cuba, with Spiritist groups and churches on the one hand and Spiritist elements in African-derived religions on the other, the former covering a range from “white” organisations—who, as a rule, see themselves as “philosophies” rather than “religions”—to “white-washed” African-derived religions (like Brazilian Umbanda). As to Puerto Rico, purely African derived religions are rather imported than autochthonous. In all those places, the religions in question focus strongly on healing. Black Spiritual Churches in New Orleans are—as a rule—a later development, and their origins as well as the degree of “African” elements they include are still discussed among scholars.
From Syncretism to Hybridity: Transformations in African-derived American Religions: An Introduction
Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society, 2023
In this volume, we bring together research on African derived Religions in Latin America and African American Religions in the USA. Theoretically, the concepts of hybridity and syncretism are discussed, in the introduction as well as in the papers included. The papers featured deal with Brazilian Umbanda, Cuban Santería, US African Black Hebrew Israelites, the Five Percenter movement (an offspring of the Nation of Islam), and one single person, Robert T. Browne, an activist in the Black Nationalist movement. In the religions covered-that are an outcome of the historical circumstances of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade-elements taken from West and Central African traditions, European Christianity, and Kardecian Spiritism blend to new forms of religious movements. This being the "fundamental" transformation of religion addressed here, some essays in the volume also look at the further transformation of those traditions in a "glocalized" world.
Margarita S. Guillory and Daniel Gorman Jr., "African American Spiritual Churches".pdf
The Religious Studies Project, 2018
Guillory, Margarita and Dan Gorman. 2018. “African American Spiritual Churches," The Religious Studies Project (Podcast Transcript). 29 January 2018. Transcribed by Helen Bradstock. Version 1.1, 26 January 2018. Available at: http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/podcast/african-american-spiritual-churches/.
The Word of God Made Song: the Cultural Impact of the African American Spiritual
Od folkloru k world music: Hudba a Slovo, 2022
The paper focuses on several of the most well-known spirituals (Sing Low, Sweet Chariot; Go Down Moses; Down by the Riverside) and looks at how the words of the Bible and the sermons of preachers inspired the lyrics of these songs. The words of the spirituals, inspired in particular by the Biblical stories of the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt, liberation and the reaching of the Promised Land, mirrored the plight of African Americans not only during slavery, but during the Reconstruction era and up to the time of the Civil Rights movement. The Fisk Jubilee Singers were pioneers in introducing the genre, not only to the rest of the United States, but also to the world.
AFRICAN AMERICAN SPIRITUALS AS A RESPONSE TO THE TRAUMA OF ENSLAVEMENT
Enslavement in the US created a complex context in which several generations of people of African descent experienced collective traumas over the course of two and half centuries. Spirituals, as a genre of music and performative practice, are usually seen as inextricably linked to slavery and can be regarded as many-sided collective responses to the traumatic experiences generated within the context of enslavement. The spirituals and their association with slavery bear a complex relationship to the evolution of collective identity among US people of African descent in a post-slavery era in which racist social structures continued to generate personal and collective traumas that affect them. In this presentation we examine attributes of the spirituals as responses to the traumas of enslavement; we also consider how spirituals might be utilized as responses to traumatic experiences of Black and others in the contemporary world.