Spirituals (or Negro spirituals^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}) are religious (generally Christian) songs that were created by enslaved African people in the United States.

Terminology and origin[link]

The term spiritual is derived from spiritual song. The King James Bible's translation of Ephesians 5:19 is: "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord." The term "spiritual song" was often used in the black and white Christian community through the 19th century (and indeed much earlier), and "spiritual" was used as a noun to mean, according to the context, "spiritual person" or "spiritual thing", but not specifically with regard to song. Negro spiritual first appears in print in the 1860s,^[7] where slaves are described as using spirituals for religious songs sung sitting or standing in place, and spiritual shouts for more dance-like music.

Musicologist George Pullen Jackson extended the term spiritual to a wider range of folk hymnody, as in his 1938 book White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands, but this does not appear to have been widespread usage previously. The term, however, has often been broadened to include subsequent arrangements into more standard European-American hymnodic styles, and to include post-emancipation songs with stylistic similarities to the original Negro spirituals.

Although numerous rhythmical and sonic elements of Negro spirituals can be traced to African sources, Negro spirituals are a musical form that is indigenous and specific to the religious experience in the United States of Africans and their descendants. They are a result of the interaction of music and religion from Africa with music and religion of European origin. Further, this interaction occurred only in the United States. Africans who converted to Christianity in other parts of the world, even in the Caribbean and Latin America, did not evolve this form.^[8]

Religious significance[link]

	"The Gospel Train" "The Gospel Train" published by the Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1872 and performed by the United States Navy Band's Sea Chanters ensemble
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Negro spirituals were primarily expressions of religious faith. Some may also have served as socio-political protests veiled as assimilation to white American culture. They originated among enslaved Africans in the United States. Slavery was introduced to the British colonies in the early 17th century, and enslaved people largely replaced indentured servants as an economic labor force during the 17th century. In the United States, these people would remain in bondage for the entire 18th century and much of the 19th century. Most were not fully emancipated until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865.

Suppression of indigenous religion[link]

During slavery in the United States, there were systematic efforts to de-Africanize the captive Black workforce. Slaves were forbidden from speaking their native languages, and were generally converted to Christianity.

Because they were unable to express themselves freely in ways that were spiritually meaningful to them, enslaved Africans often held secret religious services. During these “bush meetings,” worshipers were free to engage in African religious rituals such as spiritual possession, speaking in tongues and shuffling in counterclockwise ring shouts to communal shouts and chants. It was there also that enslaved Africans further crafted the impromptu musical expression of field songs into the so-called "line singing" and intricate, multi-part harmonies of struggle and overcoming, faith, forbearance and hope that have come to be known as Negro spirituals.

Restrictions were placed on the religious expression of slaves. Rows of benches in places of worship discouraged congregants from spontaneously jumping to their feet and dancing. The use of musical instruments of any kind often was forbidden, and slaves were ordered to desist from the "paganism" of the practice of spiritual possession.

However, several traditions rooted in Africa continue to the present day in African-American spiritual practices. Examples include the "call and response" style of preaching in which the speaker speaks for an interval and the congregation responds in unison in a continual pattern throughout the sermon. The "call and response" is often accompanied by instruments and sounds much like a song. Speaking in tongues is a persistent practice, as is "shouting." Shouting may involve anything from jumping in one place repeatedly, running through the sanctuary, raising hands and arms in the air, shouting traditional praise phrases, or being "slain in the spirit" (fainting). The locations and the era may be different; but the same emphasis on combining sound, movement, emotion, and communal interaction into one focus on faith and its role in overcoming struggles, whether as an individual or a people group, remain the same.

Replacement with Christianity[link]

The lyrics of Christian spirituals reference symbolic aspects of Biblical images such as Moses and Israel's Exodus from Egypt in songs such as "Michael Row the Boat Ashore".

Christian hymns and songs were very influential on the writing of African-American spirituals. Slave composers took material from older songs, such as Christian hymns, and the Bible to create something entirely new and special to the culture. Spirituals were not simply different versions of hymns or Bible stories, but rather a creative altering of the material; new melodies and music, refashioned text, and stylistic differences helped to set apart the music as distinctly African-American.^[9]

There is also a duality in the lyrics of spirituals. They communicated many Christian ideals while also communicating the hardship that was a result of being an African-American slave. The spiritual was often directly tied to the composer's life.^[10] It was a way of sharing religious, emotional, and physical experience through song.

Claims of coded messages[link]

Many internet sources and popular books claim that songs such as "Wade in the Water" contained explicit instructions to fugitive slaves on how to avoid capture, and on which routes to take to successfully make their way to freedom.^[11] "Wade in the Water" allegedly recommends leaving dry land and taking to the water as a strategy to throw pursuing bloodhounds off one's trail. "The Gospel Train", "Song of the Free", and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" are likewise supposed to contain veiled references to the Underground Railroad, and many sources assert that "Follow the Drinking Gourd" contained a coded map to the Underground Railroad. The authenticity of such claims has been challenged as speculative, and critics have pointed to the apparent lack of primary source material in support of them.^[12][13]

Collections[link]

Jubilee Singers of Fisk University[link]

In the 1850s, Reverend Alexander Reid, superintendent of the Spencer Academy in the old Choctaw Nation, hired some enslaved Africans from the Choctaws for some work around the school. He heard two of them, "Uncle Wallace" and "Aunt Minerva" Willis, singing religious songs that they had apparently composed. Among these were "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", "Steal Away to Jesus", "The Angels are Coming", "I'm a Rolling", and "Roll Jordan Roll". Later, Reid, who left Indian Territory at the beginning of the Civil War, attended a musical program put on by a group of Negro singers from Fisk University. They were singing mostly popular music of the day, and Reid thought the songs he remembered from his time in the Choctaw Nation would be at least as appropriate. He and his wife transcribed the songs of the Willises as they remembered them and sent them to Fisk University.

The Jubilee Singers put on their first performance singing the old captives' songs at a religious conference in 1871. The songs were first published in 1872 in a book entitled Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University, by Theodore F. Seward. Wallace Willis died in 1883 or 1884.

Over time, the pieces the Jubilee Singers performed came to be arranged and performed by trained musicians. In 1873, Mark Twain, whose father had owned slaves, found Fisk singing to be "in the genuine old way" he remembered from childhood. By contrast an anonymous 1881 review in the Peoria Journal said: “they have lost the wild rhythms, the barbaric melody, the passion….[T]hey smack of the North….” Some fifty years later, Zora Neale Hurston in her 1938 book The Sanctified Church criticized Fisk singers, and similar groups at Tuskegee and Hampton, as using a "Glee Club style" that was "full of musicians' tricks" not to be found in the original Negro spirituals, urging readers to visit an "unfashionable Negro church" to experience real Negro spirituals.

Other collections[link]

A second important early collection of lyrics is Slave Songs of the United States by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison (1867).

A group of lyrics to Negro spirituals was published by Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who commanded a regiment of former slaves during the Civil War, in an article in The Atlantic Monthly^[7] and subsequently included in his 1869 memoir Army Life in a Black Regiment (1869).^[14]

The latter half of the 20th century saw a resurgence of the Spiritual. This trend was impacted strongly by composers and musical directors such as Moses Hogan and Brazeal Dennard.

See also[link]

• History of slavery in the United States
• Deep River Boys
• Religious music
• African-American music
• Gospel music

Footnotes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Nash, Elizabeth (2007). "Autobiographical Reminiscences of African-American Classical Singers, 1853-Present". Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0-7734-5250-8

External links[link]

• The Spirituals Project
• Sweet Chariot: the story of the spirituals
• Fisk Jubilee Singers
• Marian Anderson: A Life in Song
• Historical Notes on African American melodies, including 75 Negro spirituals with downloadable arrangements for solo instrument
• Free Gospel scores

Audio samples[link]

• Listen to "Pharaoh's Army Got Drowned," artists unknown (765 KB)
• Gordon Collection; performed by unknown persons in the Bay Area of California in the early 1920s
• Download recording of "Deep Down in My Heart", from the Library of Congress' Gordon Collection; performed by W. M. Givens in Darien, Georgia, on about March 19, 1926

v t e Christian music Roots and Beginnings Chorale Hymn Negro spirituals Sacred Harp Shape note Jesus music Genres and Subgenres Contemporary Christian music Contemporary worship music Gospel music Fusion genres Christian rock Christian hardcore Christian metal Southern Gospel Traditional black gospel Christian alternative rock Christian punk Christian ska Christian country music Progressive Southern Gospel Christian hip hop Gospel blues Urban contemporary gospel Chant v t e Christian liturgical chant Eastern Armenian Byzantine Coptic Georgian Ethiopian Syrian Znamenny Western Ambrosian Anglican Beneventan Celtic Gallican Gelineau Gregorian Mozarabic Old Roman Lists Christian bands and artists by genre Christian country artists Christian dance, electronic, and techno artists Christian folk/folk rock artists Christian hardcore bands Christian instrumental/jazz/swing artists Christian metal bands Christian punk bands Christian vocal artists Christian record labels Gospel musicians Other topics Christianity Christian media Christian music industry Christian music festivals Portal Category

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2012)

David playing his harp (unknown artist, c. 960). The book of Psalms, included in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and said to have been written largely by David, is one of the earliest collections of sacred music, and still plays a role in the liturgies of the two religions.

Religious music (also sacred music) is music performed or composed for religious use or through religious influence.

A lot of music has been composed to complement religion, and many composers have derived inspiration from their own religion. Many forms of traditional music have been adapted to fit religions' purposes or have descended from religious music. There is a long history of Christian Church music. Johann Sebastian Bach, considered one of the most important and influential European classical music composers, wrote most of his music for the Lutheran church. Religious music often changes to fit the times; Contemporary Christian music, for example, uses idioms from various secular popular music styles but with religious lyrics. Gospel music has always done this, for example incorporating funk, and continues to do so.

Monotheism and tonality, all tones relating and resolving to a tonic, are often associated, and the textures of European homophony, equated with monotheism, may be contrasted with Asian heterophony, equated with poly or pantheism. Navajo music's cyclic song and song-group forms mirrors the cyclic nature of their deities such as Changing Woman.

Christian music[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

The earliest Christian or Jewish notion of a song devoted unto God, is mentioned in the chapter of Exodus 15, where the Israelites returned from Egypt, and had seen what God had done once they crossed the river (and the Pharaoh of Egypt's armies were destroyed in the river).

The remnants of Early Christian sacred chants or Hymnody are found in the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches. There are many arguments^[where?] that the Early Christian chant is very similar to Syriac sacral music and Byzantine chants, which are based on tonal modes.

The Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church, and the Traditionalist Roman Catholic Church preserve the most ancient of Christian chant. The Amish and Mennonite Protestants as well as the Assyrian Church of the East also practice various ancient forms of Christian chant during worship services. Each Orthodox church has developes their own chant tradition based on the ancient chant tradition of the Early Christian worship that developed in Jerusalem.

In ancient Christian chants, the chanting is unaccompanied by instruments instead relying on the human voice for sacred chant. However in some Christian chant traditions; particularly the Coptic chant, Roman chant, and Armenian chant, instruments are sometimes used. Roman Catholics and some High Church Protestants use the Pipe Organ as their main instrument of accompaniment for sacred music. In more modernised Christian denominations, all instruments can be used in worship. Modernised Protestant Christians consider sacred song to be a spontaneous revelation.

'Sacred music' or Sacred song is also known in Modernised Protestant Christian circles as 'Inspirational music', 'Free Worship', 'Free Flow' and 'Prophetic song'; they are closely connected to Free worship inspired by the Holy Spirit. While Mainline Protestants and High Church Protestants will use a combination of Post-Reformation hymns and contemporary Christian hymns.

Many of the Early Christian chants are still present in the Orthodox churches; these include: Phos Hilaron, Beneath thy Compassion, the Great Doxology, and the Psalter.

Hindu music[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Kirtan originated in the Hindu bhakti tradition as loving songs sung to God. The songs are called 'Bhajans' in which one invocated Hindu Gods and this can be a song or repetition of the same hymn which is called 'Dhun'. When people sit together for Hindu Music this is called 'Satsang'. There are more than 1000 hindu religious songs as there are many gods.

Sikh music[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Kirtan is one of the pillars of Sikhism and in that context refers to the singing of the sacred hymns from the Guru Granth Sahib to music. Sikhs place huge value on this type of singing and a Sikh is duty bound to listen and/or sing Guru-kirtan as frequently as possible. Sikhs also have 'Dhadi Varaan' which use the Dhad sarangi to sing about Sikh history. In Sikh sacred music, there are 31 different ragas or melodic scales which have connection to human moods and are applied to the make the sacred kirtan music. Punjabi and Hindustani Classical Music instruments such as the tabla and harmonium are used to accompany the kirtan.

Jewish music[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

The earliest synagogal music was based on the same system as that in the Temple in Jerusalem. According to the Talmud, Joshua ben Hananiah, who had served in the sanctuary Levitical choir, told how the choristers went to the synagogue from the orchestra by the altar (Talmud, Suk. 53a), and so participated in both services.

Jewish sacred music ranges based on the different traditions of each community of Jews and their historical geographic locations. Some of these include the: Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Yemenite, and Mizrahi.

Sephardic music, the music of Spanish Jews, was born in medieval Spain, with cancioneros being performed at the royal courts. Since then, it has picked up influences from across Spain, Morocco, Argentina, Turkey, Greece and various popular tunes from Spain and further abroad. There are three types of Sephardic songs — topical and entertainment songs, romance songs and spiritual or ceremonial songs. Lyrics can be in several languages, including Hebrew for religious songs and Ladino.

Islamic music[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Islamic sacred chant is used primarily for chanting prayrers, reading from the Holy Qur'an, and singing Nasheeds. Islamic chant originated in what is now Saudi Arabia in the Muslim holy-city of Makkah, the heartland of Islam.

Quranic recitation or Qira'at must done according to Tajwid (Proper pronunciation and chant tone during recitation, as well as recitation at a moderate speed.)

Islamic Nasheeds are religious hymns sung in various melodies by Muslims without any musical instruments using a unique style of Arabian maqam and other variants. However some nasheed groups perform by using some percussion instruments.

Desi Musims (Muslims from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India) make use of traditional instruments such as the tabla and harmonium in devotional music. Sufi Muslems in Turkey, Iran, and the Desi world also use various instruments in devotional music.

Rastafarian music[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Nyabinghi music is the most integral form of Rastafarian music. It is played at worship ceremonies called grounations, which including drumming, chanting and dancing along with prayer and smoking of ritual ganja. Nyabinghi probably comes from an East African movement from the 1850s to the 1950s that was led by women who militarily opposed European imperialism. This form of nyabinghi was centered around Muhumusa, a healing woman from Uganda who organized resistance against German colonialists. The British later led efforts against nyabinghi, and classified it as witchcraft through the Witchcraft Ordinance of 1912. In Jamaica, nyabinghi was appropriated for similar anti-colonial efforts, and is often danced to invoke the power of Jah against an oppressor. The connection between the religion and various kinds of music has become well-known due to the international fame of musicians like Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.

African-Caribbean music[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Rastafarian music is not the only kind of religious music in the Caribbean. Religious sects have their own musical styles, though they vary from island to island. Obeah and Myal as well as Christian sects associated with revivalism are common in Jamaica. These styles have also influenced Jamaican dances. Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Haiti in particular have also developed African-influenced musical styles that are used in religious rituals associated with Santería, Vodou, and Espiritismo.

Shintō music[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Shintō music (神楽) is ceremonial music for Shinto (神道) which is the native religion of Japan. It is related to Gagaku (雅楽) or old festival music. Taiko has also been used.

Buddhist music[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Buddhist music is music for Buddhist ceremony or meditation, most often taking the form of sutra recitation. Many believe^{[weasel words]} that Buddha himself wrote the music for his people to play.

Zoroastrian music[link]

Zoroastrian music is a genre of music that accompanies Zoroastrian traditions and rites.

See also[link]

• Christian music
• Church music
• Gospel music
• Liturgical music
• Music and politics
• Secular music
• Spiritual (music)
• World Sacred Music Festival

External links[link]

• Gregorian chant, liturgical music (CD, scores, learning)
• The Gregorian chant of the abbeys of Provence in France (fr. with Translator)
• New England religious music
• Hibba's Web Anthology of Traditional Jewish Music