Congo Square
Another essential musical location in North America that captured enslaved African music was in Spanish-controlled New Orleans. It is here, or more precisely in Congo Square-a place where the Africans could be themselves, even if it were just once a week-that the enslaved Africans' music and dances were allowed to develop unfettered to a large extent. Donaldson states:
There, slaves recently from Africa were allowed to spend Sunday afternoons dancing and singing, and remembering their African heritage. This spectacular site of hundreds and even thousands of slaves engaged in what seemed to be wild and frantic dances often drew White observers, some of whom took the time to write intelligibly on what they saw. The result is a glance at the music, dance, and other cultural traits of African slaves in that period as they attempted in vain to keep alive their heritage.
(Donaldson 1984, 63)
One observer visiting the city in 1799 mentioned that a "vast number of negro slaves, [sic] men, women, and children assembled together on the levee drumming, fifing, and dancing in large rings." Another traveler visiting the city in 1808 described "seeing groups of slaves dancing and singing in the city." The instruments that he describes are interesting. These, he wrote, "consist[ed] for the most part of a long narrow drum of various sizes, from two to eight feet in length, three or four of which make up a band. Observers of the activities there later echoed similar descriptions of drums used at Congo square (Donaldson 1984, 65).
The engineer, Benjamin Latrobe-later responsible for the building of the Capital after the War of 1812-visited the city in 1819 and described in writing and sketches the instruments that he came in contact on a Sunday afternoon:
They were formed into circular groups…The music consisted of two drums and a string instrument…On the top of the finger board was the rude figure of a man in a sitting posture, & two pegs behind him to which the strings were fastened. The boy was a calabash… A man sung an uncouth song...which I suppose was in some African language, for it was not French...The allowed amusements of Sunday have, it seems, perpetuated here those of Africa.
(Donaldson 1984, 65-66; Southern 1997, 136-137)
The variety of African-style dances in New Orleans would include la calinda, the chica, and the bamboula. To quote Southern, "Obviously, the entire performance of the Place Congo dance was in the same African tradition as the Pinkster dances in New York and the jubilees in Philadelphia. The instruments and the performance practice were like those described by witnesses of the eighteenth-century slave festivals in the North, and, moreover, like those reported by travelers to Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries" (Southern 1997, 138).
Howard Thurman
For [the slaves] the 'troubled waters' meant the ups and downs, the vicissitudes of life. Within the context of the 'troubled' waters of life there are healing waters, because God is in the midst of the turmoil. Do not shrink from moving confidently out into the choppy seas. Wade in the water, because God is troubling the water.
Booker T. Washington
The plantation songs known as "Spirituals" 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.