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Overview

The African American musical genre known as the antebellum folk spiritual assumed an identiﬁable shape sometime after the arrival of African slaves on the North American continent but long before the American Civil War. In her initial analysis of the genre, Maultsby writes: "As a form of religious expression performed primarily in contexts free of White control, antebellum folk spirituals were outside the boundaries of consciousness for the vast majority of the White American public" (Maultsby 2015, 60). Unfortunately, before the advent of audio recordings, researchers can only surmise what these early sounded like by using extant descriptions and a few recordings made decades later in isolated churches throughout the South. Still, what has survived gives us an idea of what the spirituals said and a hint of their music.

Be ready to:

Define the term etymology and use of the term "spiritual" as found in the publications Slave Songs of the United States and Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands.

List at least three types of standard musical (melodic) scales used in the spiritual.

Explain the term heterophony and demonstrate its use with another student.

List the eight characteristics of a spiritual and discuss a selected spiritual focusing on one of the eight spiritual characteristics.

Describe the difference between folk spirituals and arranged spirituals.

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References

The Dissemination of the African American Spiritual in America and Europe: University Singing Movement 3

The first great success of the Singers took place on December 5, 1871, in Henry Ward Beecher's church in Brooklyn, New York, where they brought him and his congregation to tears. The Jubilee Singers performance transfixed everyone. As the last tones faded off in the silence of Plymouth Church, Beecher stepped forward and opened his purse. "Do likewise," he told his congregation, "folks can't live on air. Though they sing like nightingales, they need more to eat than nightingales do" (Ward 2000, 154). This event was the beginning of a whole series of successes (Lovell 1972, 403).

Advertisement for the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Knights of Pythias Temple, Dallas, Texas, 1919

Ulysses S. Grant

During the next seven years, the Singers toured the United States and Europe with great success giving excellent visibility to African American spirituals worldwide. President Ulysses S. Grant gave them an audience at the White House; Queen Victoria came to the home of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll to hear them, and the English Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, entertained them at breakfast. During this time, the Fisk Jubilee Singers collected $150,000 to take back to their school. "Calculated purely on the basis of inflation, that amounts to a little over two and a half million in today's dollars." (Ward 2000, 395). More important was the fact that they had made known to the world the music of the African American, that they had sung "the slave songs so deeply into the world's heart that it can never wholly forget them again" (Dubois 1973, 252).

First Troupe of Jubilee Singers: Fisk Jubilee Singers

Click the link above to view the image of the first troupe of Jubilee singers photographed in early 1872. Seated, left to right: Minnie Tate, Green Evans, Jennie Jackson, Ella Sheppard, Benjamin Holmes, and Eliza Walker. Standing, left to right: Isaac Dickerson, Maggie Porter, and Thomas Rutling.

History, despite its wrenching pain
cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage,
need not be lived again.

(Maya Angelou)

Maya Angelou

History, despite its wrenching pain
cannot be unlived, but if faced with
courage,
need not be lived again.

Down in the Valley

We'll run and never tire
We'll run and never tire
We'll run and never tire
Jesus sets poor sinners free