Spirituals were performed in religious settings like worship services and often combined with expressive movement.
Credit: New York Public Library Digital Collections
Spirituals
Essential Questions:
Exploring Spirituals
African Americans were first documented creating spirituals in the late 18th century during their experience of slavery. They used the musical and cultural experiences that they retained from their West African heritage to create new music in their new contexts.
Play the following video from History Detectives-Slave Songbook, to learn how spirituals have their own unique origin in African American culture.
Spirituals were often composed spontaneously and with a lot of improvisation in direct response to the singers’ religious, personal, and communal experiences. They would be performed in religious settings like worship services and nonreligious settings, such as during labor in fields. In worship settings, spirituals might be combined with expressive movements like dancing or shouting. The lyrics reflected Christian religious concepts, personal and social issues, as well as the desire for freedom from forced labor. In most contexts, community participation in music-making was essential and expected.
From the time of their creation, spirituals have been shared from one community to the next and passed down through the generations, largely by rote (orally) and eventually through books, sheet music, and recordings.
