Spirituals and Folk Music
Recommended Books
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Spirituals: A Multidisciplinary Bibliography for Research and Performance
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Spirituals originated among enslaved Africans in America during the colonial era. They resonate throughout African American history from that time to the civil rights movement, from the cotton fields to the concert stage, and influenced everything from gospel music to blues and rap. They have offered solace in times of suffering, served as clandestine signals on the Underground Railroad, and been a source of celebration and religious inspiration. Spirituals are born from the womb of African American experience, yet they transcend national, disciplinary, and linguistic boundaries as they connect music, theology, literature and poetry, history, society, and education. In doing so, they reach every aspect of human experience. To make sense of the immense impact spirituals have made on music, culture, and society, this bibliography cites writings from a multidisciplinary perspective. This annotated bibliography documents articles, books, and dissertations published since 1902. Of those, 150 are books; 80 are chapters within books; 615 are journal articles, and 150 are dissertations, along with a selection of highly significant items published before 1920. The most recent publications included date from early 2014. Disciplines researched include music, literature and poetry, American history, religion, and African American Studies. Items included in the annotated bibliography are limited to English-language sources that were published in the United States and focus on African American spirituals in the United States, but there are a few select citations that focus on spirituals outside of the United States. Of the one thousand annotations, they are divided, roughly evenly, between: general studies and geographical studies; information about early spirituals; use of spirituals in art music, church music, and popular music; composers who based music on spirituals; performers of spirituals (ensembles and individuals); Bible, theology, and religious education; literature and poetry; pedagogical considerations, including the teaching of spirituals as well as prominent educators; reference works and a list of resources that were unavailable for review but are potentially useful. This book also offers considerable depth on particular topics such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers and William Grant Still with over thirty citations devoted to each. At the same time, materials included are quite diverse, with topics such as spirituals in Zora Neale Hurston's novels; bible studies based on spirituals; enriching the teaching of geography through spirituals; Marian Anderson's historic concert at the Lincoln Memorial; spiritual roots of rap; teaching dialect to singers; expressing African American religion in spirituals; Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's music; slave tradition of singing among the Gullah. The book contains indices by author, subject, and spiritual title. Additionally, an appendix of spirituals by biblical reference, listing both spiritual title to scriptural reference as well as scripture to spiritual title is included.
Call Number: ML128.S4 A29 2015 (Music Reference)Publication Date: 2015 -
Choral Arrangements of the African-American Spirituals: Historical Overview and Annotated Listings
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Although the choral arrangements of the African-American spirituals constitute the largest group of folk song arrangements in western literature, they have received little scholarly attention. This book provides the needed historical and stylistic information about the spirituals and the arrangements. It traces the history and cultural roots of the genre through its inception and delineates the African and European characteristics common to the original folk songs and arrangements. Ensembles that have perpetuated the growth of the spiritual arrangements--from Fisk Jubilee Singers of the 1870s through those currently active--are chronicled as well. Musicians, choral directors, and scholars will welcome this first complete text on the African-American spiritual genre. Annotated listings of titles provide information choral directors need to make ensemble-appropriate performance choices. Arrangements indexed by title, arranger, and subject complement the accompanying biographies and repertoire information. Well-organized and thoroughly researched, this text is a valuable addition to music, choral, multicultural, and African-American libraries.
Call Number: ML128.V7 T75 1998 (Music Reference)Publication Date: 1998 -
Follow Me: The Life and Music of R. Nathaniel Dett
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Best known for his spectacular direction of the Hampton Institute Choir from 1913 to 1931, Robert Nathaniel Dett was also a fine pianist, composer, and arranger of Negro folk songs and spirituals. In 1908 he was the first African American to receive a music degree for a five-year course from Oberlin Conservatory. The Hampton Choir, under Dett's direction, was the first mixed group to sing in Salzburg Cathedral in 1930. Simpson's full account of Dett as a successful professional musician, compiled primarily as a reference work, will also interest the general reader. Includes photos, analyses, and musical examples.
Call Number: ML410.D375 S55 1993Publication Date: 1993 -
"Tell Them We Are Singing for Jesus": The Original Fisk Jubilee Singers and Christian Reconstruction, 1871-1878
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This is the Story of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Between 1871 and 1878, the Jubilee Singers presented concerts featuring the Negro spirituals that won the applause and admiration of the Western world. The rise and renown of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers form one of the most celebrated stories of post-Civil War America. Equally fascinating are the varied, multitudinous influences that converged to catapult them onto the world's stage and into the annals of history. Tell Them We Are Singing for Jesus explores the Christian missionary ideals and convictions that spawned the Fisk Jubilee Singers during the 1870s and guided the ensemble throughout its impressive U.S. and European travels. This historic choral ensemble was sponsored by the American Missionary Association (AMA), the parent organization of Fisk University. The troupe's stellar success afforded the American Missionary Association an unprecedented public platform from which to advance its Christian views for social change. Fisk University's reputation was also enhanced as praise for the Jubilee Singers' artistic performances, noble mission, and refinement filled the press. Each company member stood as a living testimonial to the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual attainment of which all African Americans were capable. AMA leaders considered the Jubilee Singers as divinely appointed fellow laborers in attaining the lofty goals of Christian Reconstruction. Through a unique partnership that blended ministry and music, the AMA and the Jubilee Singers fought to establish a world in which the freedom message of the Negro spiritual rang true.
Call Number: ML421.J77 A65 2010Publication Date: 2010 -
Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest in the South Carolina Sea Islands
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In Gullah Spirituals musicologist Eric Crawford traces Gullah Geechee songs from their beginnings in West Africa to their height as songs for social change and Black identity in the twentieth century American South. While much has been done to study, preserve, and interpret Gullah culture in the low country and sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia, some traditions like the shouting and rowing songs have been all but forgotten. This work, which focuses primarily on South Carolina's St. Helena Island, illuminates the remarkable history, survival, and influence of spirituals since the earliest recordings in the 1860s. Grounded in an oral tradition with a dynamic and evolving character, spirituals proved equally adaptable for use during social and political unrest and in unlikely circumstances. Most notably, the island's songs were used at the turn of the century to help rally support for the United States' involvement in World War I and to calm racial tensions between black and white soldiers. In the 1960s, civil rights activists adopted spirituals as freedom songs, though many were unaware of their connection to the island. Gullah Spirituals uses fieldwork, personal recordings, and oral interviews to build upon earlier studies and includes an appendix with more than fifty transcriptions of St. Helena spirituals, many no longer performed and more than half derived from Crawford's own transcriptions. Through this work, Crawford hopes to restore the cultural memory lost to time while tracing the long arc and historical significance of the St. Helena spirituals.
Call Number: ML3556 .C76 2021Publication Date: 2021 -
Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War
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From the plaintive tunes of woe sung by exiled kings and queens of Africa to the spirited worksongs and "shouts" of freedmen, enslaved people created expansive forms of music from the United States to the West Indies and South America. Dena J. Epstein's classic work traces the course of early Black folk music in all its guises. Anchored by groundbreaking scholarship, it redefined the study of Black music in the slavery era by presenting the little-known development of Black folk music in the United States. Her findings include the use of drums, the banjo, and other instruments originating in Africa; a wealth of eyewitness accounts and illustrations; in-depth look at a wide range of topics; and a collection of musical examples.
Call Number: ML3556 .E8Publication Date: 1977 -
Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry
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Spirituals performed by jubilee troupes became a sensation in post-Civil War America. First brought to the stage by choral ensembles like the Fisk Jubilee Singers, spirituals anchored a wide range of late nineteenth-century entertainments, including minstrelsy, variety, and plays by both Black and white companies. In the first book-length treatment of postbellum spirituals in theatrical entertainments, Sandra Jean Graham mines a trove of resources to chart the spiritual's journey from the private lives of slaves to the concert stage. Graham navigates the conflicting agendas of those who, in adapting spirituals for their own ends, sold conceptions of racial identity to their patrons. In so doing they lay the foundation for a Black entertainment industry whose artistic, financial, and cultural practices extended into the twentieth century.
Call Number: ML3556 .G77 2018Publication Date: 2018 -
Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals
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A psychologist and musician reveals how the spirituals embody a rich tradition of values, particularly in human relationships, community, and hope.
Call Number: ML3556 .J72 1993Publication Date: 1993 -
Racial Uplift and American Music, 1878-1943
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Racial Uplift and American Music, 1878-1943 traces the career of racial uplift ideology as a factor in elite African Americans' embrace of classical music around the turn of the previous century, from the collapse of Reconstruction to the death of composer/conductor R. Nathaniel Dett, whose music epitomized "uplift." After Reconstruction many Black leaders had retreated from emphasizing "inalienable rights" to a narrower rationale for equality and inclusion: they now sought to rehabilitate the race's image by stressing class distinctions, respectable middle-class behavior, and service to the masses. Musically, the Black intelligentsia resorted to European models as vehicles for cultural vindication. Their response to racism was to create and promote morally positive, politically inoffensive art that idealized the race. By incorporating Black folk elements into the dignified genres of art song, symphony, and opera, "uplifters" demonstrated worthiness through high achievement in acknowledged arenas. Their efforts were variously opposed, tolerated, or supported by a range of white elites with their own notions about African American culture. The resulting conversation--more a stew of arguments than a dialogue--occupied the pages of Black newspapers and informed the work of white philanthropists. Women also played crucial roles. Racial Uplift and American Music, 1878-1943 examines the lives and thought of personalities central to musical uplift--Dett, Sears CEO Julius Rosenwald, author James Monroe Trotter, sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, journalist Nora Douglas Holt, and others--with an eye to recognizing their contributions and restoring their stature.
Call Number: ML3556 .S37 2012Publication Date: 2012 -
Folk Song of the American Negro
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Reprint of the 1915 edition. One of the earliest scholarly treatments of African American folk music written by the leader of the Fisk University Jubilee Quartet.
Call Number: ML3556 .W78 1915APublication Date: 1969 -
Songs of Slavery and Emancipation (eBook)
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Throughout the history of slavery, enslaved people organized resistance, escape, and rebellion. Sustaining them in this struggle was their music, some examples of which are sung to this day. While the existence of slave songs, especially spirituals, is well known, their character is often misunderstood. Slave songs were not only lamentations of suffering or distractions from a life of misery. Some songs openly called for liberty and revolution, celebrating such heroes as Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner, and, especially, celebrating the Haitian Revolution. The fight for freedom also included fugitive slaves, free Black people, and their white allies who brought forth a set of songs that were once widely disseminated but are now largely forgotten, the songs of the abolitionists. Often composed by fugitive slaves and free Black people, and first appearing in the eighteenth century, these songs continued to be written and sung until the Civil War. As the movement expanded, abolitionists even published song books used at public meetings.
Call Number: JSTOR BooksPublication Date: 2022 -
So You Want to Sing Spirituals: A Guide for Performers (eBook)
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With their rich and complicated history, spirituals hold a special place in the American musical tradition. This soul-stirring musical form is irresistible to singers seeking to diversify their performance repertoire, but it is also riddled with controversy, especially for singers of non-African descent. The author, a singer and historian, welcomes singers of all backgrounds into the style while she explores its folk song roots and transformation into choral and solo vocal concert repertoire. Profiling key composers and pioneers of the genre, the author also discusses the use of dialect and other controversial performance considerations. Contributed chapters address elements of collaborative piano, studio teaching, choral arrangement, voice science, and vocal health as they apply to the performance of spirituals.
Call Number: ProQuest Ebook CentralPublication Date: 2019
Recommended Scores and Anthologies
Collections of Spirituals for Solo Voice:
- Spirituals for Solo Singers, ed. Jay Althouse
M1670 .S651 1994 (High Voice)
M1670 .S65 1994 (Low Voice) - The Books of American Negro Spirituals, edited by James Weldon Johnson & J. Rosamond Johnson.
(Book 1 & 2, originally published in 1925 & 1926)
M1670 .B66 2000z - The Spirituals of Harry T. Burleigh
M1670 .S64 1984 (High Voice)
M1670 .S647 1984 (Low Voice)
Collections for Chorus:
- The Oxford Book of Spirituals, for mixed chorus, edited by Moses Hogan
M1670 .O94 2002 - 64 Spirituals a cappella: Traditional Afro-American Songs,
arr. for 4-8 voices by Graham Buckland
M1670 .A14 2011 - The Hampton Institute of Virginia is another university with a tradition of singing spirituals.
Singer Roland Hayes published a collection divided Biblically. - The Story of the (Fisk) Jubilee Singers with Their Songs, 1881, online via Google Books.
Audio and Video Resources
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There Breathes a Hope: The Legacy of John Work II and His Fisk Jubilee Quartet, 1909-1916
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Stung by critics who perceived spirituals as painful reminders of slavery, uplifted by the praise of royalty and world-renowned artists, John Wesley Work II toiled for three decades at Fisk University with single-minded determination to promulgate the good news of jubilee songcraft. Here for the first time his story is told in vivid detail by celebrated author Doug Seroff, accompanied by the 43 extant selections recorded by the Fisk Quartet when Work led the group-including all nine legendary Edison cylinders that feature Roland Hayes as second tenor and the four recitations of Paul Laurence Dunbar's poetry by James A. Myers. The selections are introduced by spoken excerpts from Rev. Jerome I. Wright, one of the last living Fisk students to have sung under John Work's direction. Two CDs, more than 100 pages of history and illustrations, and recording notes by Tim Brooks, author of Lost Sounds, give voice to the bondsman's hope and breath to the freedman's courage.
Call Number: Compact Disc 23280Publication Date: 2010
Interlibrary Loan
Users are encouraged to search for items beyond University Libraries' catalog via RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and WorldCat. Materials not available in print or online may be requested through Interlibrary Loan. Please allow up to seven days for electronic delivery and up to fourteen days for delivery of physical items.