From Negro to New African: The evolution of the Spiritual and its role in the surviva

[Moorbey]

From Negro to New African: The evolution of the Spiritual and its role in the survival and liberation

Learn all about New African Spirituals this Sunday, May 18, 3pm, Cal State East Bay, Music Building Room 1055

When I was 12 years old, I started taking voice lessons, learning how to sing European Classical music: opera, art songs and the like. After a year or so I was assigned a Spiritual to learn, and I sang it like I did all the other songs I’d learned – in a Classical context.

“Girl, get Colored,” my voice teacher was fond of saying. It was a reprimand that stuck with me and that I have been known to tell the choir that I now direct. Confusion ensued. I wondered just how “Colored” I could get while still performing the Spirituals I sang in a Classical context.

Knowing that these songs were sung by enslaved New Africans (Africans in a new location), I did not understand why they were sung in a Classical idiom. It would not be until years later that I realized the key to understanding the Spiritual would be to analyze the language used to classify it.

Negro vs. New African

The prevailing title attributed to Spirituals that aids in the misconception of the purpose of the Spiritual is the word “Negro.” The label “Negro Spirituals” gives little insight into the history and function of this music. The word Negro is a nebulous word that, in a world full of meaning garnered through historical and cultural connections, attributes none. There are no people called Negroes. There is no Negro homeland, culture or religion.

There are Africans, however, who come from Africa. While the Africans enslaved in the United States came from many parts of Africa, primarily from West Africa, various aspects of their differing cultures and religions were the same. Thus a new collective identity was formed amongst Africans, and their American born descendants, in the United States.

Although separated from their homeland geographically, linguistically and religiously, these New Africans were still inherently connected traditionally, culturally and spiritually. So while no longer able to speak Wolof or Yoruba or any of the many other languages native to West Africa, New Africans still performed the same rituals – only in English. This intrinsic African identity is the context that must be understood in order to understand New African Spirituals.

Since the world view of New Africans was still fundamentally African, Spirituals must be analyzed in the same context of traditional African music. Within this context, the two main attributes of traditional African music that must be included in any discussion on Spirituals are function and ritual – with call and response and improvisation being two main stylistic elements.

Spirituals were primarily used as a means of communication. Spirituals had messages encoded in them that were often essential to the singer’s or listeners’ survival. Such messages included plans to escape, escape routes, the location of safe houses along the Underground Railroad, and news about the latest New African being murdered. Such messages were encoded in Spirituals such as “This Little Light of Mine,” “Wade in the Water” and “Were You There?”

Plaintive messages asking God for deliverance form slavery were also offered up in song through the vehicles of the Spiritual and the accompanying ritual called a Ring Shout. Ever true to the cultural, social and spiritual retentions of their homeland, New Africans often sang Spirituals inside of this ritual.

A common theme among Africans from Western and Central Africa is the belief in the sacredness of the circle. This African view is holistic. Through the circle, the living and the dead are unified, for the living are an extension of the dead.

Furthermore, a common belief is that ritual and prayer or worship are unified – two sides of the same coin. One without the other is incomplete. So, Spirituals, as sung by enslaved New Africans, were almost always sung within the context of this ring.

The historical and cultural framework of enslaved New Africans must be understood to analyze Spirituals. While it is a widely accepted fact that some Spirituals are coded, the coding of Spirituals was actually more pervasive a practice than many realize.

Too many historical inaccuracies exist to continue believing the assumption that New Africans welcomed Christianity, the religion of their oppressors, with open arms. Plantation owners feared New Africans learning of Christianity, with its numerous Biblical stories of God coming to the aid of the downtrodden, for fear of rebellions.

This fear was confirmed by the rebellions led by both Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, who were both literate, enslaved New African preachers who drew their inspiration from the Bible. Furthermore, what exposure enslaved New Africans did have to Christianity was limited to teachings such as, “Don’t steal your master’s hogs.” Thus actual Christian conversion rates before 1865, the year slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment, were rather low.

Thus, it cannot be assumed that Spirituals are strictly religious songs, for Biblical reference was simply the vehicle used for communication. Harriet Tubman, also known as the Moses of her people for leading hundreds of New Africans to freedom, often sang spirituals to alert the enslaved of her arrival and of her intended departure.

When she made her initial escape from slavery she sang the following song to alert her friends and family to her departure: “When dat ar ole chariot comes, / I’m gwine to lebe you. / I’m boun’ for de promised land. / Frien’s, I’m gwine to lebe you.”

Frederick Douglass said it best when he wrote, “Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.”
For more information, attend a lecture demonstration on decoding New African Spirituals this Sunday, May 18, at 3 p.m. at Cal State East Bay, Music Building Room 1055. You may also contact Taiwo at taiwoseitu@yahoo.com.