A History of the African-American Spiritual

How the African-American Spiritual has maintained its integrity
in the face of major social and musical challenges

[Based on an article by Thomas Lloyd published in the August 2004 issue of the Choral Journal of the American Choral Directors Association; all rights reserved.]

12. The Spiritual as Freedom Song

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Looking back, we can see how each of the dramatically different manifestations of the concert spiritual managed to preserve some but not all elements of what we think of as how the spirituals originally sounded. The first touring groups of the Fisk Jubilee Singers established the essential dignity of the songs, allowing them to speak to new audiences with simplicity and directness. The male quartets showed how vocal refinement could reveal an intimacy and pure songfulness in the spirituals that might otherwise have been missed. The great soloists displayed the artistry of subtly improvised inflection, in the way that a slave song leader might have put his personal stamp on a song. The extended arrangements for large professional and college choirs revived a sense of the collective power of communal singing. But while all this creativity both preserved and re-invigorated the music of the spiritual, it was still a struggle for the spiritual to penetrate the minds of its listeners with the meaning the songs had in the hearts of those who performed them, who were themselves the descendents of the slaves.

Certainly, once the music had survived the popular exposure of triumphant world tours, hit recordings of quartets or renowned soloists, and the Hollywood fanfare of the movies, there would be more space to present the music for its own sake. In the concert hall, academy, or church, spirituals could be performed alongside affectionate commentary on their origins and meaning. However, it was perhaps only with the recruitment of the spiritual to the service of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s that the songs came into their own as music that told a story and inspired action.

More often than not, the original words were changed to make the already multi-layered symbolic meanings of the spirituals explicit to the modern ear. But it was not a far stretch to modify the text of the spiritual Hold On! from "Keep on climbin', and don’t you tire, “Ev’ry rung goes high'r and high'r", to "We’re gonna ride for civil rights,” we’re gonna ride both black and white."[1] The revival of the spiritual as freedom song, sung by whole rooms or streets full of people whose only audience was a transfixed world looking on, was not just a by-product of the movement, but an essential expression of its heart and soul.

"If You Miss Me from the Back of the Bus," arranged and led by Betty Mae Fikes:

 

With a new awareness of the unfinished business of the Emancipation Proclamation, the spiritual was understood again as a powerful vehicle for the expression of human sorrow, active resistance to injustice, and confidence in a just future.

Musical Examples:

15. "If You Miss Me from the Back of the Bus," arranged and led by Betty Mae Fikes in Selma, Alabama, 1963; on Voices of the Civil Rights Movement – Black American Freedom Songs – 1960-1966, Smithsonian Folkways LC 9628. Compare with the original spiritual, O Mary Don’t You Weep Don’t You Mourn in Musical Example 6.

Notes:

[1]For printed versions of spirituals that were adapted as freedom songs, see Sing for freedom : the story of the Civil Rights Movement through its songs, compiled and edited by Guy and Candie Carawan. (Bethlehem, Pa. : Sing Out Corp., c1990); includes songs originally published in: We shall overcome (1963) and Freedom is a constant struggle (1968), by Oak Publications. For recordings of these songs from the period, see Smithsonian Folkways CD(2) SF 40084, Voices of the civil rights movement - Black American freedom songs, 1960-1966 (re-issued 1997).