African American Spirituals

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.

In this insightful and provocative volume, Lauri Ramey  reveals spirituals and slave songs to be a crucial element in American literature. This book shows slave songs' intrinsic value as lyric poetry, sheds light on their roots and originality, and draws new conclusions on this art form that is rarely studied as part of the lyric poetry canon. This book restores the slaves' songs to their rightful place in American literature as lyric poetry and a touchstone of the American cultural imagination.

Kelley, James. "Song, Story, or History: Resisting Claims of a Coded Message in the African American Spiritual 'Follow the Drinking Gourd'." The Journal of Popular Culture 41.2 (April 2008): 262–280.

This article traces and challenges popular, enduring claims that escaping slaves in the American South used songs as literal roadmaps in their pursuit of freedom.

In 1877, the African American musical ensemble known as the Fisk Jubilee Singers traveled to Germany to raise money for their university.  The choir’s ten-month tour provided German listeners with one of their first significant and sustained encounters with African Americans and African American culture in the nineteenth century. As listeners throughout Germany heard the ensemble perform, they began to debate the Fisk Jubilee Singers’ musical, cultural, and ethnic origins. At the heart of their growing ethnomusicological and anthropological interest in the Jubilee Singers’ music lied the question of whether or not African Americans were fulfilling the powerful promise of the civilizing mission: were they proof that people of the black diaspora were capable of accepting “Western” art music and cultural values? This article illustrates how African American music contributed to global conversations on the civilizing mission in the nineteenth century.

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.

This article is based in part on the experience of collaborative performances  by the Chamber Singers of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges, directed by the author, with the Fisk Jubilee Singers under the
direction of Paul Kwami and the Howard University Choir under the
direction of J. Weldon Norris. It traces the history of performance of the Spiritual through the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, to  the Fisk quartet recordings, the solo arrangements sung by Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson,  and Roland Hayes, to the large choral arrangements of Hall Johnson and William Dawson, to the Civil Rights era, where the Spirituals returned to one of their original functions as songs of community resistance. The article concludes with a discussion of how predominantly white choirs might seek to perform this repertoire with respect for the extreme circumstances of its origins alongside finding their own connection through the common humanity whose very denial was the origin of slavery and the reason for the universal  appeal of this unique repertoire all over the world.

Tato kapitola z knihy o africké poezii se věnuje básni "Deixa passar o meu povo" lusofonní mozambické básnířky Noémie de Sousové. Na příkladu českého překladu této básně z roku 1958 ukazuje nepředvídatelné trasy lidí, myšlenek a kulturních artefaktů.