Singing from the Soul: Our Afro-American Heritage: Breaking the Fetters of Formality

Imagine 50,000 persons gathering for a funeral in the cold winds of a Chicago January morning—and the New York Times not reporting it.

Well, that actually happened in 1969. The funeral was that of famous gospel singer Roberta Martin, and it symbolized the neglect with which mainstream America has treated the genius of black American church music.

Gospel is one of the most important forms of that genre of song—but it is only one. There are also spirituals, jubilees, black hymns, praises, “cross-over” music, and black anthems. All of them are distinct contributions of Afro-American culture to the American scene and to the entire world. But they are generally unnoticed by both the white church and secular musical arenas.

Exceptions exist, of course. The general public was forced to acknowledge the spiritual as perhaps the first uniquely American indigenous musical form, especially when Marian Anderson included them in her repertoire before 75,000 listeners on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (after she was denied concert access to famed Constitution Hall). More recently, the creative genius of Andrae Crouch has gained currency in white evangelical churches—although most who hear and sing his songs are unaware of the difference between his “cross-over” music and traditional black gospel music. (It is called “cross-over” precisely because it is in vogue among both blacks and whites. Much as disco music crosses the secular racial song-settings, Crouch’s kind of “pop-gospel” accomplishes the same thing.)

If the American mainstream has not recognized the appeal of black religious music (it is hardly ever called “sacred music” in black circles), some evangelists have, though; and they have added black singers to their traveling staffs especially in order to attract blacks to their crusades. Billy Graham was one of the first to do this, with the addition of the late Ethel Waters (and then Myrtle Hall and others). Oral Roberts, in much the same trend, sponsored an entire gospel ensemble known as Souls Afire. Even the late Kathryn Kuhlman employed Jimmie McDonald, now pastor of an African Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City, as her soloist. (He too had earlier been with the Graham Team.) For more suspect motives, many of the Pentecostal free-lance healing evangelists have switched to almost all-black musical entourages, since classical Pentecostal leaders and their church members have shunned the sensationalism of A.A. Allen types.

Nevertheless, the subtle tentacles of racism have prevented wider acceptance of black musical gifts in the churches. Say the word “gospel” to the average white Christian, and he will think of the salvation message exclusively; or say “gospel music,” and he will think of the Oak Ridge Boys or the Blackwood Brothers quartet. But “gospel” in the black community always means music (the words “singing” or “music” are never appended, however), while “the gospel” means salvation.

Similar shifts in understanding occur in other ways. Spirituals, when utilized in white churches, often are viewed as mere “protest” music or folk songs—a backhanded compliment that always connotes inferiority. Even when they are sung as musical offerings, they occasionally engender discussion over the comfortability of using non-standard constructions or pronunciations; and a kind of stilted form results because black instrumentalists are not permitted to accompany, or white soloists are chosen to sing lead parts, while blacks (in integrated choirs) are kept in the stands. An even more obvious anomaly occurs when black singers in predominantly white gatherings choose (or are encouraged) to sing only standard white compositions.

Because these difficulties seem to persist even in integrated churches, it is to the black church one must go to experience black religious music in its total effect. (Indeed, it is the sterile, single mode of music in white churches which most effectively prevents their attracting larger numbers of black worshipers and members. There is a recognition in the black community that churches and taverns are alike in at least one respect: one can always tell the clientele they are seeking to perpetuate by the kind of songs that fill their air.)

In the black church, however, music reigns supreme in all its glory and diversity. There even the Catholic churches sing mass with gospel choirs replete with tambourines and hand-clapping; and Pentecostal church choirs ring out with anthems. Nobody in the former category considers such a “folk mass”; and no one in the latter thinks that Beethoven (himself rumored to have African ancestry) strains are too “high church or uppity.”

Music in the black neighborhood, the same as politics, receives uniform expression. While there are appreciative motions for varied kinds of white music and politics, musical tastes and political opinions do not vary according to income and educational differentials as much as they do in the dominant society. As James H. Cone puts it, “It is impossible to be black and encounter the spirit of black emotion [in the spirituals and other songs] and not be moved.”

In a very real sense, the whole worship ritual is musical in essence. Services in black congregations normally last longer than in white ones, because time must be given to sing testimonies, sing prayers, sing offerings, and even sing sermons—plus sing “songs.” As a carry-over of African tradition, the “Spirit will not descend without song”; and every peition, every cry, every joy, must be acted out in song and dance and percussion. Thus the prayers become musical chants, the intonations of the worshipers become rhythmical, and both testimonies and sermons begin slowly but build to amazing intensity in inflection, stress, and pitch. The minister who truly preaches (and the member who truly testifies) will eventually place his hand to his ear as if trying to hear that heavenly melody, and the pianist and organist will add to every pause with a refrain in the same key. (In fact, instrumentalists in black churches can tell you exactly in which key each familiar minister is known to pitch his sermon.) All of this, together with the famed call-and-response format, is African in origin. It is Africanism baptized in Christian symbolism.

Most directly African, of course, are the spirituals themselves. The spiritual existed for a long time in oral tradition before it ever was set to a written score. Often a narrative ballad, it reflected the historical experience of the slave and followed themes of justice and deliverance. Most of the spirituals have come down to us in varied forms with adapted lyrics and even sounds. Partly this is because they were continuations of African songs, and the African forms were never reduced to writing before they were transmuted into African-American variations. Partly also, this is due to the fact that there were many accidental and intentional errors of transmissions by white observers who attempted to record the slave songs. Eileen Southern, black professor of music at Harvard, says the spirituals “were transferred from one congregation to another by itinerant preachers, by the black watermen who worked on the boats that plied the Mississippi and Ohio and Missouri Rivers, and finally by the slaves when they were sold from one state to another.”

The first printed versions were not published until 1867, but missionaries were reported to have heard Africans singing melodies so closely resembling certain spirituals that they felt they had found them in their original form. One such song was “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” In Rhodesia, not only the melody, but also the thought expressed had parallels. Among one ethnic group, a chief near death would be placed in a canoe headed toward the great falls for his final journey to the “other world,” while the people bankside sang. Tradition has it that on one such occasion, as the chief’s canoe neared the edge, a mist from above descended and bore him aloft. Thus are traced both the content and melody of this great spiritual which we know in its Christianized form.

Early Afro-American slaves did not think of themselves as such, but as captives in a strange land. When forbidden to hold secret cult meetings because of their potential for fomenting rebellions, these men and women were forced (in the presence of white supervision) to phrase their hopes and aspirations in Christian code-language. The River Jordan thus really meant the ocean; heaven symbolized Africa or deliverance; Moses was (at different times) sung to mean Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, and even Bishop Francis Asbury; the Old Ship of Zion was a ship bound for Africa’s homeland; and Weeping Mary was the distraught mother separated from her young who had been sold off to other plantations.

From these earliest beginnings, black church music, like the church itself, reflected the absence of division between sacred and secular. The social and political content of salvation history, for the black church, did not originate in the social gospel of religious liberalism, but was part and parcel of the black church’s song and word from its origin.

Not unlike the spirituals were the early black hymns. They too were first sung as part of an oral tradition, and only later set to writing. Unlike the spirituals, however, they were more Afro-American than African in origin and development. Some of them were tunes from the “field hollers” and other slave songs set to Christian words. Others were adaptations of hymns by Isaac Watts, or mixtures of Watts’s hymns and spirituals.

John Wesley’s journals mention a white Methodist minister, the Rev. John Davies, who described his ministry among the slaves and noted that they “take so much pleasure” in the Watts hymns and songbooks he shared. By 1801, the Rev. Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination (the first independent black church), had published a hymnal for black churches, called A Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns Collected from Various Authors by Richard Allen, African Minister. While no tunes were included, only textual material, this hymn book reflected both the Watts style and innovations. Often, in these and later hymns, the white models were supplemented with lines from typical prayers or favorite scriptures, additional choruses, or numerous refrains injected throughout.

Musicologists have noted that Afro-Americans used shifted accents, rhythmic syncopation, polyphony, altered timbral qualities, and diverse vibrato effects to Africanize the white hymns.

While the use of black hymns in the churches dates from about 1750, it was not until 1848 that the first black congregation brought musical instruments into the sanctuary; and not until 1841 did any black church have a choir. Both of these additions, needless to say, caused much internal dissension in both Baptist and Methodist churches (called African Baptist Churches or African Methodists), particularly among the holiness claimants. There is a very important school of musicology which holds that many of the songs and hymns sung at the white frontier camp meetings were, in fact, borrowed from the blacks who participated in them.

Once musical instruments were accepted, it was not long until anthems were also created by blacks for use in the churches. Dr. Evelyn Davidson White of Howard University has compiled a list of more than 300 choral anthems commercially published by more than sixty such composers.

Another important kind of church music are the jubilees. Like the spirituals and black hymns, the jubilees date back to slavery time. In fact, some persons define them as “joyful, high-spirited spirituals.” They were almost always spontaneous creations in the beginning, arising from the masses who were not permitted to learn to read or write, and who had no musical training. Always shouting-songs, they were wholly original with complicated rhythms. In 1871, Fisk University formed its first group of Jubilee Singers who presented these traditional songs to a wider public through travels and concerts. Some of these jubilees are still sung in black churches today.

Of course, the most current songs in black churches now are gospels. The year 1933 is usually considered the beginning of this musical form. It was that year that Thomas Dorsey, a black blues musician, composed the song “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” after the death of his wife and child while he was “on the road.” But gospel itself developed out of two separate traditions—the quartet style found in black Baptist churches after the First World War, and the new style of religious music found in black Pentecostal (“sanctified”) church who had baptized jazz and blues with Christian lyrics.

Gospel is heavily antiphonal, has a pronounced beat, and much instrumentation and improvisation. It represents an amalgam of the spirituals, jubilees, field songs, jazz, reels, blues, and hymns. Characterized by gliding pitches, moans and wails, flattened and diminished chords and notes (especially third and fifth), riffs, breaks, rags, and blue notes, it has been termed “composed folk song” by Pearl Williams-Jones, prominent ethno-musicologist.

Actually, one might speak of different kinds of gospel, since the term now includes slow and worshipful “praises,” up-tempo “shout songs,” testimonial “choruses” and “jubilistics,” the “sermon-songs” of James Cleveland and Shirley Caesar, and the “cross-over” songs of Andrae Crouch and others. Dorsey (who is now seventy-nine and assistant pastor of Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago) claims that gospel was taken from the “sanctified” (Pentecostal) churches in an effort to revitalize Baptist and Methodist congregations. While it is true that the roots of gospel are primarily in the Pentecostal churches, it is also true that Baptist and Methodist churches scorned the new gospel music for many years. Except for the storefronts (which early adopted it), the larger churches have only lately come to accept gospel as a regular feature of Sunday morning services.

Gospel has had profound effects, not only upon black church music, but also on white music and on secular music. Not only “Precious Lord,” but also “Deeper, Deeper,” “Washed in the Blood” (both by C.P. Jones), “Jesus the Son of God” (by G.T. Haywood), “Peace in the Valley” (by Dorsey), and scores of other songs now used by white evangelicals, were all written (both words and music) by black composers. It has been estimated that nearly 75 percent of all black rock and soul singers got their start in black churches singing gospel. Even now, Al Green is the pastor of a Pentecostal church in Memphis; Billy Preston is also a minister; and Little Richard (like scores of other artists) has gone back and forth between gospel and rock so many times one finally loses count. Every one of the more than 120 black colleges and universities also has its own official gospel choir; and there is a National Black College Choir Festival. The influence of gospel has been so wide that it is difficult to draw the line between the sacred and the secular in these realms.

Duke Ellington, of course, is another who took the impulse of gospel to bring jazz concerts to liturgical churches. Gospel has always been a regular feature of mass meetings conducted by civil rights organizations of all kinds: it accompanied the singing of marchers with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and it is a regular feature of Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH meetings. Gospel was also uniquely the base of many of the docu-dramas and plays of Langston Hughes, as well as the more modern plays like “Your Arm’s Too Short to Box With God.” Even secular poet Nikki Giovanni chose a New York gospel choir for background music for both her recordings of poetry. Black dance troupes also perform to gospel.

But gospel remains preeminently the province of the churches. Denominations such as the Church of God in Christ, which still do not use hymn books of any kind in local churches, employ national music representatives such as the famed Mattie Moss Clark of Detroit to tour the country, training choirs in the newest black-composed songs. And James Cleveland’s Gospel Music Workshop draws more than 20,000 black youths and hundreds of choirs to a different city each year for much the same purpose. Cleveland is pastor of a Baptist church.

But it matters not whether it is gospel, jubilees, anthems, hymns, or spirituals. It is all best described as singing from the soul.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.

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