Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff. Lauren
Speaker 1: Vogelbaum here. When enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas,
Speaker 1: they were forced to leave behind pretty much all material possessions,
Speaker 1: but they were able to hang on to some cultural traditions,
Speaker 1: including one of vibrant, rhythmic communal music, and that's how
Speaker 1: the African American spiritual was born. Although white communities had
Speaker 1: their own folk spirituals, Enslaved people use spirituals as a
Speaker 1: form of work song in order to boost their companion's spirits,
Speaker 1: convey their sorrows, convey secret messages, and seek comfort in religion.
Speaker 1: For the article, this episode is based on How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: Spoke with Sandra Jean Graham via email back in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty a. Graham is now a professor of ethno musicology
Speaker 1: at Babson College and the author of the book Spirituals
Speaker 1: and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry. She explained
Speaker 1: that although enslaved Africans came from many different societies, there
Speaker 1: were some widespread musical traditions that brought about the spiritual,
Speaker 1: including communal songs featuring call and response, in which some
Speaker 1: performers or usually the leader would call out a statement
Speaker 1: or ask a question and other singers would respond. She
Speaker 1: explained that many songs also exhibited a flexible, approached pitch
Speaker 1: and a pattern of repetition and variation that allowed for
Speaker 1: overlapping musical layers and improvised embellishment of melodies and rhythm. A.
Speaker 1: Graham also cites Black composer and scholar Ollie Wilson, who
Speaker 1: stated that there was a general preference for a heterogeneous
Speaker 1: sound ideal, or a combination of certain timbers of voices
Speaker 1: and instruments. A Graham said. In addition, music was usually
Speaker 1: linked to other acts such as dance, poetry, drama, clothing,
Speaker 1: and it played a prominent role in social and political life.
Speaker 1: And finally, music had a spiritual aspect linked to ritual
Speaker 1: the ancestors, the gods that inhabited the natural world. Perhaps
Speaker 1: most famously, enslaved people sometimes communicated secret messages through spirituals
Speaker 1: as a way to bypass the enslavers who would be
Speaker 1: listening in on their conversations. For example, some sang through
Speaker 1: coded songs to provide instructions that would allow a route
Speaker 1: for escape to the north and to freedom, particularly on
Speaker 1: the underground railroad. A. Graham said, Harriet Tubman famously used
Speaker 1: go down Moses to signal that she was nearby and
Speaker 1: ready to conduct people to the north, and she used
Speaker 1: wade in the water to direct her passengers toward a
Speaker 1: river if bloodhounds were on their trail. Frederick Douglas, who
Speaker 1: became a prominent abolitionist after escaping slavery, later wrote about
Speaker 1: singing a spiritual during an escape attempt, including words run
Speaker 1: to Jesus, shun the danger. I ain't going to stay
Speaker 1: much longer here. However, Douglas wrote that the enslavers caught
Speaker 1: onto their plan because they sang too fervently. It's possible
Speaker 1: that spirituals didn't function as much in escape attempts as
Speaker 1: we might think, although Graham says it's impossible to know
Speaker 1: due to the lack of written documentation. But after the
Speaker 1: Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the United States,
Speaker 1: spirituals took on a new purpose in black communities. They
Speaker 1: became a key fixture of commercial entertainment during the Reconstruction era. A.
Speaker 1: Graham said, the folk spirituals evolved during reconstruction to become
Speaker 1: arranged concert music that was written down and sold in
Speaker 1: books and sheet music. This new spiritual was intended to
Speaker 1: be more of a presentational experience with performers and observers,
Speaker 1: rather than a communal experience in which all attendees participated.
Speaker 1: A grim continued. So the biggest change was that spirituals
Speaker 1: were presented as art music and were also committed to print,
Speaker 1: removing the plethora of opportunities for improvisation and participation that
Speaker 1: the folk tradition had provided. There was one group who
Speaker 1: popularized this concert spiritual more than any other, the Fisk
Speaker 1: Jubilee Singers, who went on tour to fundraise for Fisk
Speaker 1: University in the eighteen seventies. After the singer's tour, their
Speaker 1: spirituals became branded as Jubilee songs, which held sway in
Speaker 1: pop culture through the end of the eighteen hundreds. In
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds, the famed Black American classical composer
Speaker 1: Harry T. Burley took up the mantle and began composing
Speaker 1: and arranging spirituals for solo singers and pianists, including songs
Speaker 1: considered classics today like Deep River and Swing Low Sweet Chariot.
Speaker 1: Many popular singers performed them widely in the nineteen tenths
Speaker 1: through the nineteen forty, but in the latter half of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, spirituals fell out of favor among some
Speaker 1: Black Americans. Randy Jones wrote in her book So You
Speaker 1: Want to Sing Spirituals? A Guide for performers, that quote
Speaker 1: as a result of the rebirth of racial pride obtained
Speaker 1: from the civil rights struggles of the nineteen sixties. Anything
Speaker 1: that appeared to reflect passivity and acceptance of the status
Speaker 1: quo was rejected by the young warriors who fought in
Speaker 1: the trenches to reap the rewards of political activism. She
Speaker 1: wrote that many black activists turned to gospel music instead,
Speaker 1: which had risen out of Pentecostal worship in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. A Graham expanded on the difference between gospel
Speaker 1: music and spirituals, as she said, whereas spirituals focused on
Speaker 1: the afterlife as a source of eventual freedom, a gospel
Speaker 1: meaning good news songs focused on the here and now,
Speaker 1: how to get through each day. But what about the
Speaker 1: connection between spirituals and other musical traditions within black communities,
Speaker 1: such as the blues. A Graham cites theologian James Cone,
Speaker 1: who called blues secular spirituals. A. Graham said they may
Speaker 1: have been born in freedom, but African Americans still suffered,
Speaker 1: and the blues was a vessel into which they poured
Speaker 1: their daily troubles. Lots of blues artists even saying spirituals
Speaker 1: in the blues style. In the twenty first century, spirituals
Speaker 1: may primarily serve as a form of legacy music or
Speaker 1: a remembrance of the past. A. Graham said, it is
Speaker 1: true that spirituals are, in a sense no longer a
Speaker 1: living tradition. The last time they were newly created to
Speaker 1: serve a vital social role was during the Civil Rights movement. However,
Speaker 1: spirituals also live on today in the imagination and work
Speaker 1: of modern day artists like the Macintosh County Shower and
Speaker 1: pianist Lara Downs. Downs twenty twenty album Some of These Days,
Speaker 1: reflects on social justice themes, particularly through her contemporary rendition
Speaker 1: of spirituals. Hastaff Works also spoke by email with Downs,
Speaker 1: who explained that she chose spirituals partly as a way
Speaker 1: to connect to her family history and the black struggle
Speaker 1: for freedom. She said, my dad was black and my
Speaker 1: mom is white, and they met at a sit in
Speaker 1: during the civil rights movement, and that movement was really
Speaker 1: powered by this music, these spirituals and freedom songs, and
Speaker 1: so this music was the soundtrack to their activism and
Speaker 1: their love story. Downs wrote of being drawn to the
Speaker 1: emotional intensity, defiance, and underlying message of hope within spirituals.
Speaker 1: She said she drew inspiration from performances by black singers
Speaker 1: and civil rights activists like Mahellia Jackson and Nina Simone.
Speaker 1: She said that spirituals represent quote our conscience and our courage,
Speaker 1: and that they also remind her of the uneven nature
Speaker 1: of progress throughout US history. She said they are the
Speaker 1: best possible reminder that the road to freedom is a
Speaker 1: long one and we still have a long way to go,
Speaker 1: that we have to keep moving forward despite roadblocks and hazards,
Speaker 1: and we have the ancestors at our backs. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article the Legacy of African American
Speaker 1: Spirituals in Today's Gospel and Blues Music on howstaffworks dot Com,
Speaker 1: written by Terry yr Lagata. Brainstuff is production of by
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com, and it's
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio,
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