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Overview

Booker T. Washington took the time to pen the following words: "The plantation songs known as

are the spontaneous outburst of intense religious fervor. They breathe a child-like faith in a personal Father, and glow with the hope that the children of bondage will ultimately pass out of the wilderness of slavery into the land of freedom. In singing of a deliverance which they believed would surely come, with bodies swaying, with the enthusiasm born of a common experience and of a common hope, they lost sight for the moment of the auction block, of the separation of mother and child, of sister and brother. There is in the plantation songs a pathos and a beauty that appeals to a wide range of tastes, and their harmony makes abiding impression upon persons of the highest culture. The music of these songs goes to the heart because it comes from the heart" (Darden 2004, 70).

Be ready to:

Identify how spirituals integrate the use of biblical language.

Describe/identify how the use of the world of nature impacts the textual message of the spiritual.

Describe the slaves' personal experience of the spiritual.

Determine the African heritage seen in the Election Day festivities.

Identify the African heritage seen in the Pinkster Day Celebration

Describe the African heritage seen in the music, dances, and instruments in Congo Square, New Orleans.

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References

African Celebrations in the New World

Previous lessons have already stated that Africans did not come to North America devoid of their cultural memories. As a prime example, music played an essential role in African society and "is an integral part of African life from the cradle to the grave" (Bebey 1975, 17). In her seminal work The Music of Black Americans, Eileen Southern states that "for almost every activity in the life of the individual or the community there was an appropriate music; it was an integral part of life from the hour of birth to beyond the grave" (Southern 1997, 5). Southern continues to expand on the importance of music, stating that "there was ceremonial music for the festivals commemorating agricultural rites, celebrating the installation of kings or bringing together important chiefs of the nation, and reenacting historical events of significance" (Southern 1997, 5). The importance of the music that centered around the newly transplanted African to North America is that the constant flow continuously reminded them of slave importation and of the unique home-grown musical traditions that they had left back in their mother country-Africa Information pop up icon SIDE NOTEIn the traditional African culture, every aspect of life had different music to go with the story.Wikipedia. The eminent music scholar Samuel A. Floyd, Jr., whose belief falls in line with the survivalist theory, states that "African musical traits and cultural practices not only survived but played a role in the development and elaboration of African American music" (Floyd 1995, 5) Information pop up icon SIDE NOTE"African survivals exists not merely in the sense that African American music has the same characteristics as its African counterparts, but also that the musical tendencies, the mythological beliefs and assumptions, and the interpretive strategies of African Americans are the same as those that underlie the music of the African homeland, that these tendencies and beliefs continue to exist as African cultural memory, and that they continue to inform the continuity and elaboration of African American music.".

Three traditions reminiscent of traditional African practices that have survived on the North American continent are Election Day Festivities, Pinkster Celebrations, and Congo Square.

Go Down, Moses

Dark and thorny is de pathway
Where de pilgrim makes his ways;
But beyond dis vale of sorrow
Lie de ﬁelds of endless days.