Sing it again: beloved old African American spirituals find a new following

Black Issues Book Review, Nov-Dec, 2004 by Ingrid Sturgis

Old Negro spirituals, the raw, fervent plantation songs that helped African Americans through slavery, Emancipation and Jim Crow are finding a rebirth in the era of hip-hop. The same spirituals learned in Sunday school--"Let Us Break Bread Together," "Go Tell It on the Mountain," "He's Got the Whole World in His Hand," were born when slaves, newly converted to Christianity, took words from the Bible, and turned them into religious songs and church rituals that many black churches still use today.

These same spirituals were often carefully coded instructions to help escapees find their way to freedom. Spirituals like "Wade in the Water" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" were really about escape on the Underground Railroad.

In recent years, two books, especially The Trouble I've Seen: The Big Book of Negro Spirituals by the late Bruno Chenu (Judson Press, June 2003, $20., ISBN 0-817-01448-9) and Deep River: Music and Memory in Harlem Renaissance Thought by Paul Allen Anderson (Duke University Press, June 2001, $79.95, ISBN 0-822-32577-2), are adding to the public discourse on the historical importance of elevating spirituals. Chenu, a French priest, was so smitten the first time he heard spirituals performed while visiting in the United States during the 1970s that he determined then that he would write a book on the subject.

Chenu, who died in 2003, not only examines the roots of American slavery, but also the African roots of the black church, music and the impact of the Bible on enslaved Africans. The exhaustive, well-researched book chronicles the origin of Negro spirituals from the slave trade during the 17th to 19th centuries, the biblical passages that slave owners used to justify slavery, the conversion of slaves to Christianity and their co-opting of Christianity to suit their spiritual needs. Chenu includes personal testimonies from slaves and former slaves. He contrasts the communal aspect of African music in which words are improvised to suit the situation, with the hymn sung from written words and scores. The book includes the words to 210 Negro spirituals out of the nearly 6,000 compiled by the Library of Congress. A CD of 18 of the most well-known spirituals, performed by The Moses Hogan Chorale, is padoged with the book. (The Library of Congress collection includes field recordings from as early at 1920 in its American Folk Life Center. Details are available on the library's Web site, www.loc.gov).

Anderson's book examines the role of African American folk music--spirituals, blues, jazz in the Harlem Renaissance debate about black authenticity and the music's impact on American culture. Post-slavery, black music was beginning to influence American forms of music. Debates arose between supporters of the newly assimilated Negro and a rural folk Negro aesthetic.

Both Chenu's and Anderson's books come at a time when African Americans are interested more than ever in reexamining their history, particularly the history of their slave ancestors. Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle and Moses Hogan (who died last year), have been successful in performing repertoires of spirituals. Even on the Internet, Web sites devoted to spirituals are thriving. (See "The Spiritual Cybersource," page 23.)

"Spirituals are hitting something really important as fire world gets more complicated, especially for black folks" says Arthur C. Jones, president and chairman of the board of The Spirituals Project in Denver (www.spiritualsproject.org).

"People are searching for roots, for an anchor. Other people are going to church all along looking fur some kind of anchor--not just church people. People outside the black church are seeking to latch onto something black when they are searching," says Jones. He is author of Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals (Orbis Books, September 1993), winner of the Catholic Press Association of America's first-time author book award, and coeditor of The Triumph of the Soul: Cultural and Psychological Aspects of African American Music (Praeger Publishers, November 2000). Jones says The Spirituals Project was started at the University of Denver in 1998 when he and others realized that a young generation knew nothing about the legacy of the music.

"What I am finding when I do presentations for black audiences is an ignorance of the history of spirituals," Jones says. "Yes, they are songs of pain and hurt, but they also speak to the tremendous resilience of the black community. Give me more of that."

Dallas choir director Charles Mitchell, who teaches groups to sing spirituals, says, "I see a request and demand from older congregations to hear Negro spirituals. Older members say, 'Please don't forget to include them.' The older generation still wants to hear songs that were very much part of church in the '40s, '50 and '60s. Singing Negro spirituals was a hallmark of the repertoire of church choirs."

But traditional spirituals nearly died just after slavery, as freed men and women moved to put their slave past behind them. Performers began to adopt the songs and musical arrangements of the European middle class, avoiding the "primitive" and "unsophisticated" spirituals. In fact, as noted in The Trouble I've Seen, it was a revolutionary decision that inspired the Fisk Jubilee Singers (so named for the date of freedom, called Jubilee) to begin incorporating spirituals with European arrangements. "We know from history that it was the Jubilee Singers who introduced the world to Negro spirituals," says Paul T. Kwami, director of the current Fisk Jubilee Singers and coauthor of Best-Loved Negro Spirituals: Complete Lyrics to 178 Songs of Faith, along with Nicole Beaulieu Herder and Ronald Herder (Dover Publications, June 2001). The 1867 Fisk Jubilee Singers began traveling throughout the United States and abroad, singing before audiences in a desperate attempt to raise money for their failing school. The choir was remarkably unsuccessful until they turned to singing spirituals before sympathetic white audiences.