Program Notes for The Majesty of the Spiritual
The spiritual is a true miracle. The ability of this genre of folk songs—the most uniquely American and most generative genre of American folk music—to galvanize, unify, and encourage across culture and ethnicity cannot be underestimated. These songs —expressions of mourning, suffering, strength, resilience, defiance, joy, and faith—originate from disparate peoples brought together under the most horrific of circumstances, enslavement. To come together, they lay aside their differences to create a new culture, Black culture, American culture. Spirituals are the gift that influences and undergirds myriad genres of music in the American musical corpus.
Dr. Arthur C. Jones, psychologist, musician, performer, and author, reminds us that the Black people captured and enslaved during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries had “little if any personal identification with the concept of ‘African.’ Rather, people reared in such divergent ethnic communities as the Fulani, the Yoruba, and the Mende identified almost exclusively with members of their own ethnic communities.” In order to survive, these disparate individuals had to forge a common identity. Of course, their suffering at the hands of a mutual enemy helped them to weave themselves together, but they were also guided by genuine cultural similarities upon which a mutual understanding was built.
Central to the identity of a variety of African tribes were music and dancing. Jones notes they were “tied to multiple events in the life of the community, including not only significant ceremonial events, like weddings and funerals, but also mundane daily events…” Another unifying force was African cosmology and spiritual practice, which cut across tribal ethnicities. African spirituality included the concept of a High God assisted by lesser spirits. This description makes the acceptance of Christianity within enslaved communities instantly comprehensible: the holy trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would feel very familiar.
Initially, the singing and the dancing of enslaved people was viewed with suspicion and distaste by white clergy, and they denounced it as “anti-Christian.” Their attempts to quash these forms of expression and convert the enslaved during the 18th century were not particularly successful, but a hundred years later in the American South, millions of enslaved people became Christian during The Great Revival Movement. Despite their conversion, the enslaved kept their own African spiritual practices, effectively evolving existing Protestant services into a Black religious tradition—rejecting “dull” traditional hymns in their camp meetings for a livelier music. The incorporation of handclapping, rhythms and melodies from their own culture gave birth to the spiritual. At first, these songs were improvised based on an African call and response tradition. The words of traditional hymns were reinterpreted and adapted to the needs of the enslaved community. Folk spirituals (as opposed to concert spirituals which would go on to serve a different, though related, purpose for the Black community) encompassed biblical stories, protest, longing for freedom, deliverance, and triumph over oppression.
In addition, spirituals enabled enslaved people to communicate secretly, using code to communicate escape plans. Famous examples of these include Steal Away, Deep River, and Go Down, Moses. In their arrogance, white slave owners called them “meaningless” and “unintelligible.”
After the Civil War, spirituals began to evolve. Black colleges were founded to pave the way for economic and social advancement within a Eurocentric culture. One of these colleges was Fisk University, founded in 1866. Like many of these young institutions, Fisk struggled financially. In an effort to raise money, Fisk’s treasurer, George White (a white man), established the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The first concerts performed by the Fisk Singers included classical European repertoire, as well as choral arrangements of folk spirituals. White audiences were fascinated by the spirituals, and, in response, the choir centered their performance selections on spirituals, presented in a European concert style. While White’s arrangements eliminated the improvisational quality of the folk spiritual, the printed versions preserved the call and response, dialect, polyrhythms, melodies, text, and repetition of the originals. The Fisk Jubilee Singers inspired other such groups, and together, they introduced spirituals to audiences all over the world.
At the turn of the 20th century, Black composers - inspired by folk spirituals - began writing new spirituals, both for choir and for soloists. Eventually, composer-arrangers like Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949) published arrangements of folk spirituals for solo voice with piano accompaniment, and the concert spiritual became American art song.
In keeping with this concert tradition and echoing the empowering expression of the folk spiritual, The Majesty of the Spiritual centers the work of four brilliant Black composers still creating in the 21st century: Lena McLin (whom we lost in 2023) and the living composers, Roland Carter, Jaqueline Hairston, and Uzee Brown, Jr., root themselves in the traditions of the folk spiritual while representing contemporary cries for freedom, justice, unity, mourning, and joy. Through their voices, we are invited to participate in the transformational tradition of the spiritual: coming together to form one community from many.
Synopsis by Alexis Hamilton