Spiritual (music)

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The (or the) Spiritual (also African-American Spiritual , obsolete Negro Spiritual ), from English (Negro) spiritual , is a Christian genre that emerged in the USA with the beginning of slavery in the 17th century . The spirituals are to be seen as the root of gospel .

Content

The traditional spiritual texts are almost exclusively religious in content and tell of the lives of beaten, battered and longing people, the slaves . They are about the hope of these people and their belief in God .

The emotional sounding spirituals mostly describe situations from the Old Testament that are similar to those of the slaves. They identified themselves particularly with the " chosen people " of Israel, who were able to flee from captivity, as this analogy helped them to mentally defend themselves against the devaluation by the slavery system.

The sadness is not only explained by the precarious living conditions of the Afro-American slaves, but also by the mourning for relatives, who lost them in their thousands, especially during the wave of deportations in the Second Middle Passage . Many texts focus on motherless children and orphaned parents. However, there were also love songs and satirical texts that parodied the world of the slaves or the slave owners , as well as texts that spread news about abolitionism in a hidden form .

The genesis of the spiritual

In 1619 the first slaves abducted from Africa arrived in what is now the US state of Virginia . They were used for forced labor on the large tobacco and cotton plantations . This work was hard, the smallest offenses were punished severely and brutally. Punishment with the whip was common and commonplace.

The deep roots of the Christian faith in the white population explain the scruples about keeping Christians as slaves . This also explains why no one had the slightest interest in missionizing these people. They could no longer have been kept and used as slaves. The slave owners escaped this “dilemma” through a law in 1667 that stipulated that converting a slave to Christianity did not change his social position.

Even before this law was passed, the blacks and their owners attended the services of the Christian churches, whereby the content of the service was based on the ideas of the white upper class. After 1667 this changed slowly. The Church services of the Methodists and Baptists were particularly well received by the slaves because of their down-to-earth manner. She was touched by the passion of Jesus . They identified with it and, on the other hand, used one of the few means of expression allowed them to express their concerns. They hid these behind Christian metaphors . This ambiguity of the language is typical of African American musical styles to this day. The Africans also brought influences from their home cultures into the existing white church music: their traditions, their belief in multiple gods and religious ecstasy , but also musical elements such as polyrhythm and other tones than those of the European scale ( blue notes ).

Independent black churches emerged and African religiosity mixed with Christian doctrine. Since music , dance and singing were inextricably linked to everyday life in Africa, they became an important part of black church services. In the rhythmic dialogue between the preacher and the congregation ( call and response ), songs spontaneously developed that had a biblical text as a central element. The spirituals were also sung in everyday life. They were created in free improvisation and have been passed down orally.

A smooth transition from sermon to music was typical: the sermon given by a lay preacher in a raised voice was spoken to by the congregation with Moans , i. H. Shouts like Amen or Oh Lord accompanied, which gradually merged into a mostly syncopated common rhythm that was reinforced by step sequences or clapping. Individual parishioners could now place their calls on this rhythmic foundation . H. Calling out emotional statements or passages from the Bible that the rest of the church responded to with responses ; H. have been supplemented or partially repeated. Spirituals were created from a mixture of individual and collective improvisation on the basis of all known rhythmic figures but also biblical texts. According to their improvised origin, the spirituals, once they had arisen, were not static either, but could be changed in tempo etc. depending on the situation and context.

The complexity of the corn ditties (“corn ditties ”), as the early spirituals were called at the end of the 18th century, allows for different interpretations. On the one hand, there are allusions to the social situation alongside belief in the hereafter . The call to protest stands next to the longing for freedom. Belief in Jesus stands alongside the need for salvation from slavery.

As soon as the white rule recognized elements of the spirituals as pagan , they were banned. So the dance, fetishes and altars disappeared . Drumming was also mostly forbidden, as the white slave owners saw it as a form of conversation that they did not understand. So it was replaced by the well-known clapping or stomping or the drum dance, in which you jump on one leg with a drumstick in hand.

Spiritual as a means of communication

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In the 250 or so years of slavery, around 10 million black people were deported to America. The inhumane oppression of the African population in the US led to planned revolts against slavery. Between 1670 and 1865 there were 130 armed uprisings by slaves, but most of them were brutally suppressed. The desire for liberation was always present among the black African population. However, the way from the south to free Canada was long and arduous.

From 1838, opponents of slavery organized the Underground Railroad - an escape plan with shelters, escape helpers and secret means of communication, e.g. B. various hidden codes, for example on the quilts (artfully decorated patched quilts) and in chants. These communicated the when, where and how of the organized escapes. A religiously coded language was also developed. So the area without slavery was described as My Home , Sweet Canaan or The Promised Land . This area was on the northern side of the Ohio River , which was called "Jordan" in the coded language. The refugees waded through the water to shake off the dogs of the pursuers ( Wade in the Water ). In Swing Low, Sweet Chariot , “Chariot” stands for the Big Dipper, part of the Ursa Major (Big Bear) zodiac sign , which rotates around the North Star within a day . In spring, which is probably the best time to escape, the “Chariot” is at its lowest point shortly after sunset and points the way north.

The 29-year-old escaped slave Harriet Tubman , who herself became an escape assistant on the Underground Railroad in 1849 , became famous . Her code name was " Moses " - Go down, Moses was her identification mark. Some spirituals were also simply a call for freedom and an invitation to flee ( Steal Away ). This mixing of religious and secular statements, as well as the singing of the predominantly religious spirituals in secular contexts, was not understood as profanation, but rather corresponded to the flowing transition between everyday life and religion, which is common in many African religions. A direct encounter with God is therefore part of many spiritual texts (e.g. in My Lord, What a Morning : “I'm going to live with God”).

Musical characteristics

The Spirituals emerged from the exchange of English, Scottish and Irish folk music and African and Creole musicality. Before the American Civil War, slaves were forbidden to cultivate their culture. The white masters forced the slaves to entertain them after work with their traditional folk tunes with banjo , fiddle , tambourine and bones ( castanets made of bones, later made of wood). The ability of the slaves to improvise shaped their ballads and spirituals.

The African American spiritual takes on essential characteristics of African musical culture. Before the emergence of the Spirituals, the music of the Africans was, in contrast to the European musical culture, very improvisational and was mainly based on the pentatonic scale . While a harmony theory like that of the Europeans is alien to this Ur-African music , vocal polyphony is achieved by voices in a third interval . Later, after adapting to the Christian religion, European musical features such as major and minor as well as the typical harmonic relationships were adopted. The melodies of the spirituals are often composed of so-called patterns, usually one to two-bar melodies, which are strung together and repeated in different ways in the piece.

Problematic sources

The first collection of spirituals came from Thomas Wentworth Higginson , who collected these ballads during the American Civil War and published them in the Atlantic Monthly in June 1867 under the title Negro Spirituals . In particular, Higginson's essay discusses the problem of transcribing spirituals and ballads. Higginson later published the essay and his experiences as a colonel in the first African-American regiment in Army Life in a Black Regiment .

The Educational Commission, which the American Congress sent to the southern states after the Civil War , expanded the Higginson collection. William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison published their collection as Slave Songs of the United States . Another edition that was created at the same time comes from Reverend Alexander Reid and was published in 1972 as Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University .

If there are any written sources or sound documents at all, spirituals are difficult to date or to classify precisely geographically, as the first collectors placed little value on these facts. Collectors like John Lomax, Howard Odum and Newman White did not even shy away from censoring, ostensibly so as not to harm the moral feelings of the readers. In early collections, what was often selected was what differed as much as possible from “white” music. In contrast, later publications by Negro Spirituals showed similarities between spirituals and white Baptist or Methodist church music, but emphasized that these could well be influenced by the spirituals. A sharp separation is not possible here.

Spirituals in German church hymn books

Some spirituals are part of official German church hymn books. In the Evangelical Hymn book (EG 499) Singing with a Sword can be found and became the song Earth and Heaven should sing . The Christmas Go Tell It on the Mountain became a Last Supper song in the Evangelical Hymn book (EG 225) and says: Come on, tell everyone! . Such adaptations can also be found in various Catholic hymn books.

See also

literature

  • Marc Bauch : Extending the Canon: Thomas Wentworth Higginson and African-American Spirituals (Munich, 2013)
  • Theo Lehmann : Nobody Knows ..., Negro Spirituals , Koehler & Amelang Leipzig 1991 (first edition 1963)
  • Bernhard Hefele: Jazz Bibliography. Directory of international literature on jazz, blues, spirituals, gospel and ragtime . Saur, Munich a. a. 1981, ISBN 3-598-10205-4
  • CH Dood: History and the Gospel , Oxford 1938, Hooder and Stoughton, English,
  • Micha Keding: History and Development of Gospel Music ( full text )
  • Lothar Zenetti: Whip and Psalm, Negrospirituals + Gospel Songs , Munich 1963, Verlag J. Pfeiffer
  • Christa Dixon: The essence and change of spiritual folk songs, Negro Spirituals , 1967, Jugenddienst-Verlag Wuppertal,
  • Velma Maia Thomas: No Man Can Hinder Me New York 2001, Becker & Mayer Books, ISBN 0-609-60719-7 , English,
  • Joachim-Ernst Berendt: Spirituals - Geistliche Negerlieder Munich 1955, Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung.
  • Wilhelm Otto Deutsch: Spirituals and gospels are not the same , in: Ev. Church in the Rhineland, “Topic: Divine Service”, No. 27/2007, pp. 45–51
  • Lawrence W. Levine: Slave Songs and Slave Consciousness. An Exploration in Neglected Sources. African American religion. Interpretive Essays in History and Culture. Timothy E. Fulop & Albert J. Raboteau (Eds.) Routledge. NY and London 1997, pp. 58-87.

Song examples

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves , Cambridge, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 219
  2. ↑ Lawrence W. Levine: Slave Songs and Slave Consciousness. An Exploration in Neglected Sources. African American religion. Interpretive Essays in History and Culture. Timothy E. Fulop & Albert J. Raboteau (Eds.) Routledge. NY and London 1997, p. 59
  3. ^ Marc Bauch : Extending the Canon: Thomas Wentworth Higginson and African-American Spirituals. P. 8.
  4. ^ Marc Bauch, Extending the Canon: Thomas Wentworth Higginson and African-American Spirituals , pp. 3 and 12
  5. ↑ William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware and Lucy McKim Garrison thank Thomas Wentworth Higginson in their foreword for the publication of the anthology Slave Songs of the United States (see p. Iv).
  6. ↑ Lawrence W. Levine: Slave Songs and Slave Consciousness. An Exploration in Neglected Sources. African American religion. Interpretive Essays in History and Culture. Timothy E. Fulop & Albert J. Raboteau (Eds.) Routledge. NY and London 1997, p. 59