I am doing a webpage for someone and it is focusing on popular music prior to 1900 in the United States.
Even in recent souces I see them refer to song as “has roots in old Negro Spirituals”
Is that term still correct? Would it be more appropriate to change it to old African-American spirtual?"
I say this as a LOT of the music was taken from this source and I was wondering if I should use this term or suggest to the client she change it?
I realize you don’t change everything. Like it’s still the United Negro Colleg Fund and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. But those are titles, but “Negro Spiritual” is kind of a title.
To me to say “African-American” would imply these songs were somehow brought from Africa whereas they are in large part developed by slave culture over here without African roots, which puts them among genuine American music and not imported.
My choir performed Sir Michael Tippett’s oratorio *A Child of Our Time * last year. Throughout the work there are negro spiritual choruses. Everyone (the conductor, singers, orchestra players and reviewers) used the term negro spiritual. The program notes did too. It’s a recognised genre of music.
What Cunctator says. And what I said in the other thread. And “African-American Spiritual” could be unintentionally-inaccurate, if the music had roots in the Caribbean rather than the present-day USA.
“Negro spiritual” is definitely the term I’ve heard. I don’t think the term “negro” is necessarily pejorative, either - it’s not an ethnic slur (of which the repertoire is expansive) but just a term that’s way out of date.
Anyway, I wanted to comment that at least according to things I’ve read, a lot of African-American music is thought to be based in part on traditional African music, and it’s probably not safe to suggest that negro spirituals were entirely American in the sense of not drawing upon West African singing styles. Besides, “African-American” generally refers to the distinct culture of black Americans; outside of strained jokes and lame stunts, no one seriously assumes that an “African-American” person is a recent immigrant from Africa.
“Negro spiritual” is a fairly distinct genre of music. The melodies, harmonies, vocal stylings, etc. set them apart. The term should not be infered to mean “songs black people used to sing in church.”
So is “spiritual”, for that matter. But the words are of the same vintage, the name for that type of music has always been “Negro spiritual”, and it only takes the addition of the word “old” to make clear to any audience that you mean only to be both accurate and respectful.
To the contrary, their African origins modified by the slavery experience are what give them their meaning, historically as well as spiritually. ISTM.
Although I wouldn’t generally take Wikipedia as a concrete musicological reference, it does suggest that the name came into use to differentiate the music from other cultures’ ‘spiritual music’.
I don’t believe it was ever considered a pejorative – there were plenty of others to choose from, and it was the preferred name for most Blacks up until the 60s when “Black” supplanted it. Prior to that, there was a concerted effort to use the word “Negro” (and making sure you pronounce it “Knee-Grow,” some some well-meaning southerners thought they were saying the word spelled “Negro,” but their pronunciation was considered a slur).
I know the sentence I wrote was godawful and nigh-unreadable, but reread it and what I was responding to - I was saying pretty much the same thing you are here.
Alan Lomax, one of the great collectors of traditional American folk music, did use the term “white spirituals” to classify some songs.
In “The Folk Songs of North America”, he describes the folk music traditions of America as dominated by a tension between the British and West African folk musical styles" “For more than two hundred years these two contrasting musical cultures dwelt side by side in America in a state of continually stimulating exchange and competition.”
Not surprisingly, then, there arose a body of songs among white congregations that shared many of the melodic, emotional, and improvisational stylings of the Negro spiritual, but with a more white dialect and with religious imagery less grounded in slavery.