December 31, 1864, they called it “Watch Night”; the eve before Emancipation Proclamation was to take effect… And so they sang “Yonder Come Day! I can feel it in my heart, Yonder Come day! Freedom!” After over two centuries of bondage, oppression, and suppression... for at least some… the day had come.

From within the fiery crucible of slavery in the United States, the African American spiritual was born. This early body of musical works that made use of vivid descriptive musical imagery, the call-and-response technique, wandering versus, improvised, and syncopated with a unique variety of musical scales and other musical nuances, eventually were studied by White Northerners, and published in Slave Songs of the United States in 1867.

During the Post Reconstruction era, alongside the period of Jim Crow, the American musical soundscape found itself embracing the emergence of two new musical genres, blues, and ragtime. In the vocal genre, what set blues apart from the spiritual was its formal and musical characteristics as well as the topics and attitudes expressed in its lyrics. It has been stated that while the Blues, like Spirituals, were prayers, one was praying to God; the other was praying to man.

Within this music lies an indelible blueprint on American society and history. It is eminently true that African Americans sang this music while building buildings, railroads, tilling fields and tending docks, even raising children not their own.

This unit will highlight the tenacity of a people to keep singing amid false hopes and promises. To fully understand the African American experience, listen intently to the words and music in this unit that focuses on Concertized Spirituals, Blues, Ragtime and Brass Bands, and African American contributions to classical tradition. For indeed, history is recorded through song.