Negro Spirituals

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the religious folk song, originally sung by the African-American Protestants of the Southern United States, which is now known as the spiritual. It attempts to understand the origin of the Negro spiritual, its development, and leading composers. It also delves into the role of the Negro spiritual in the development of blues, jazz, and ragtime. It focuses on the critical aspects of the music of the Negro spiritual and ends with a personal observation of the topic discussed.

From the Paper:

"Cecil Sharp explored the wide nature of the American folk son literature in the early parts of the twentieth century. He was later able to show that much of these were of British ancestry. G. P. Jackson then traced the influence of revivalist and evangelist songs of the early 19th century camp meetings conducted by the southern white people with the help of this discovery. Many of the black spirituals were shown by him to be the adaptations or from the inspirations of the spirituals conducted by the whites by Jackson using hundreds of comparative examples. The religious songs of the whites in the south had many sources, and the African musical traditions were mixed with these to ultimately produce the form of folk music that could be seen as distinctly black in character."

More papers on Negro Spirituals:

• Book Review # 93731 : "Of Our Spiritual Strivings"
• Term Paper # 142402 : "Baseball's Negro Leagues"
• Analytical Essay # 56472 : "Harlem Renaissance"

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