African American Spirituals and the British Isles (original) (raw)
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The Theology of the Lyric Tradition in African American Spirituals
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 70:2, 347-363, 2002
Abstract Typically, spirituals have been viewed as religious folksongs, whose literary complexity and theological importance have been appreciated insufficiently, especially as these relate to one another. Spirituals are not generally categorized as lyric poetry in spite of the fact that poetry has historically been used for theological purposes. Their cultural and artistic worth is appreciated most fully by demonstrating the close integration of their literary and theological significance. By using the tools of cognitive science, cultural studies, religious studies, and literary theory, the spirituals are shown to achieve a high level of conceptual freedom and spiritual self-determination as a liberating response to the linguistic, physical, religious, intellectual, and social constraints of the slave poets' lives. By focusing in depth as an example on the metaphorical structure of the spiritual 'Oh Mary, Don't You Weep, Don't You Moan', it becomes clear that the spirituals should be classified as a type of sacred lyric poetry that was instrumental in developing and revealing the formation of African American Christianity.
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.
A Study of Selected Slave Narratives: Mapping the Importance of Religious Experience and Slave Songs
Criterion, 2015
The genre of slave narratives holds an influential place in the African-American literary tradition. The present paper seeks to analyze a few slave narratives-Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself by Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, Written by Himself by Henry Bibb and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet Jacobs. The purpose is to underscore some of the aesthetic elements, argumentative strategies and literary techniques which characterize the genre and have enabled their success. This paper also concerns itself with the gamut of black religious experience and practice. It seeks to explore how slaves interpreted and adapted the teachings of Christianity and blended it with their African culture. The paper also traces how slaves carried forward their rich African-American legacy by narrating their experiences and expressing their religious views through the medium of songs and spirituals.
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
Spirituals and Gospel Songs: Messages of Unity, Hope, and Deliverance
IJASS, 2021
Spirituals and gospel songs have a capacity to instill courage and bring people together. Spirituals helped enslaved Americans of the antebellum American South persevere through unimaginable hardships and look optimistically to a future of freedom. Similarly, gospel songs have inspired strength and Christian harmony for centuries. This essay briefly explores the roles spirituals and gospel songs played at the end of the American Civil War and in the postwar endeavors of The Fisk Jubilee Singers and Moody-Sankey revivalists. The essay also includes analysis of Albert Brumley's popular twentieth-century gospel song "I'll Fly Away," its relationship to spirituals, and its positive reception by African American performers. There are two intended purposes: to indicate how spirituals and gospel songs provide creative insights into specific historical moments and to show how their verses transcend those moments to express broader messages of unity, hope, and deliverance.
The Story of the Exodus and the Images of the Promised Land and Heaven in the Poetry of African American Spirituals, 2017
Since the beginning of slavery blacks discovered in the Bible stories which provided not only narratives and language to delineate the difficulty of being a slave, but also hope for a better future in the afterlife. The Exodus was perceived as the Bible’s main argument that God denounced slavery and would come in a catastrophic event to judge those who mistreated blacks. This article is devoted to the exploration of the biblical figure of Exodus as a recurring trope in selected lyrics of slave spirituals and spirituals recorded by bluesmen. Scholars seem to agree that the Exodus is the migration narrative, but in this article I seek to demonstrate that it may also represent the theme of going on a spiritual journey to the other side in the hereafter or the end of time city the New Jerusalem.