Negro Spirituals
...folksongs of the American slave population, the repertory has, in large measure, stayed constant since the Civil War. Yet the ways we have understood and performed this repertory have changed dramatically over time. Tracing this history sheds light on larger forces at play within American culture, especially issues of race.
In the large, spirituals have changed in function along the following lines: The folk songs of the 18th and earlier 19th centuries gave way, after the Civil War, to college-based choral performances of arranged spirituals, and to the earliest publishing of notated collections. In the 20th century spirituals were also commonly performed in solo vocal recitals of "art song," and in recent decades they have become important staples in the repertory of some of the world's biggest opera stars, such as Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman. Along with these changes in function and style has come a gradual (though not necessarily steady) move towards treating spirituals as "good" music, as music worthy of value and serious scholarship; this of course broadly parallels the country's general progress towards ideals of equality. Each of these periods deserves brief comment.
Though the term "spiritual" was not used until the Civil War, clear references to these songs date from the early 19th century. During this time the repertory quickly became controversial. Critics who took European forms of worship for granted were aghast at the "excesses" and "growing evil" of singing "in the merry chorus-manner of the southern harvest field. . . . With every word sung, they have a sinking of one or the other leg, . . . producing an audible sound of the feet at every step. . . . If some in the mean time sit, they strike the sounds alternately on each thigh."18 As recounted by Eileen Southern in The Music of Black Americans: A History,19 though some black...
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