The Impact of Negro Spirituals on Today's Music

The Impact of Negro Spirituals on Today's Music

I believe that it would be difficult for someone to make the argument that Negro spirituals have not been influential in the field of music, much less the realm of gospel music today. However, church members often do not make the time to reflect on the heritage of a hymn or song to realize the meaning that the particular piece has carried with it through the decades, even centuries. With this in mind, I am going to look at the history of the Negro spiritual and then at specific hymns in the 1991 Baptist Hymnal, published by Convention Press, to see just what impact the Negro spiritual has had on today's church music. I believe that we will find that these songs have had a significant affect on our music, and that without it, we would not have many of the hymns that are now considered standard church music.

An important observation regarding African music comes from Richard Jobson in The Golden Trade or a Discovery of the River Gambra [Gambia] and the Golden Trade of the Aethiopians. Although published in 1623, we learn a lot about the nature of African music when we read: "There is without a doubt, no people on the earth more naturally affected to the sound of musicke than these people; which the principal persons [that is, the kings and chiefs] do hold as an ornament of their state, so as when wee come to see them their musicke will seldome be wanting" (qtd. in Southern 4).

By understanding that music was of utmost importance to the original slaves, we understand how the reverence of music was handed down through the many generations of slaves on the plantations. It is apparent that music was the highest form of expression for Africans, as well as...

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...ital Schomburg African American Women Writers in the 19th Century

Works Consulted

Fisher, Miles Mark. Negro Songs in the United States. New York: Russell & Russell, 1968.

Forbis, Wesley L. The Baptist Hymnal. Nashville: Convention Press, 1991.

"God's gonna trouble the water: The essence of African American spirituality." U.S. Catholic. Nov. 1995. ProQuest. Online. 3 Aug. 1998.

Maultsby, Portia K. Afro-American Religious Music: A Study in Musical Diversity. The Papers of the Hymn Society of America. 35. Springfield: The Hymn Society of America, n.d.

Southern, Eileen. Readings In Black American Music. New York: WW Norton, 1971.

---. The Music of Black Americans: A History. New York: WW Norton, 1971.

Thurman, Howard. Deep River and the Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death. Richmond: Friends United Press, 1975.