Negro Spirituals

 The Negro spiritual is among the earliest folk music in the United States. It was born out of the enslavement of Africans combining their emotions and newly converted religion.

The use of the term Negro is intentional on this page for two reasons:

1. It places the genre in a historical context to aid in remembering the circumstances surrounding its creation.

2. While the term African American is the generally accepted term of the 21st century, the folk composers (enslaved Africans) who created this music were considered property and were not citizens of the United States.

This developing list of print and digital resources contains books, articles, and collections of spirituals with information about the genre’s history, importance, and significance.

Books

Barber, Felicia Raphael Marie. A New Perspective for the Use of Dialect in African American Spirituals. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021.

Cuney-Hare, Maud. Negro Musicians and Their Music. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1936. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.39000005933317.

Guenther, Eileen. In Their Own Words: Slave Life and the Power of Spirituals. Fenton, MO: MorningStar Music Publishers, 2016.

Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans, 3rd edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.

Thomas, Andre. Way Over in Beulah Lan’: Understanding and Performing the Negro Spiritual. Dayton, OH: Heritage Music Press, 2007.

Collections of Spirituals with Significant Historical Information

Berlin, Natalie Curtis. Negro Folk-Songs. New York: G. Schirmer, 1918. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/012329200.

Dett, R. Nathaniel. The Dett Collection of Negro Spirituals. Minneapolis, MN: Schmitt, Hall & McCreary, 1936.

Dett, R. Nathaniel, editor. Religious Folk-Songs of the Negro as Sung at Hampton Institute. Hampton, VA: Hampton Institute Press, 1927, reprint.

Johnson, James Weldon. The Book of American Negro Spirituals. New York: Viking Press, 1925. https://archive.org/details/bookofamericanne0000john/mode/2up.

Johnson, James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson. The Books of American Negro Spirituals. Da Capo Press, 1969.

Marsh, J. B. T. The Story of the Jubilee Singers with Their Songs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1881. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100346696.

Work, John W. American Negro Songs: 230 Folk Songs and Spirituals, Religious and Secular. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1998.

Work, John Wesley. Folk Song of the American Negro. Nashville, TN: Press of Fisk University, 1915. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007119998.

Dissertations

Harris, Carl Gordon. “A Study of Characteristic Stylistic Trends Found in the Choral Works of a Selected Group of Afro-American Composers and Arrangers.” DMA diss., University of Missouri - Kansas City, 1972. ProQuest (7229463).

Articles

Barber, Felicia. “Gaining Perspective: A Linguistic Approach to Dialect Found in African American Spirituals.” The Choral Journal 58, no. 7 (Feb. 2018): 24–33.

Curtis, Marvin V. “African-American Spirituals and the Gospel Music: Historical Similarities and Differences.” The Choral Journal 41, no. 8: 9–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23553686.

Curtis, Marvin V. and Lee V. Cloud. “The African-American Spiritual: Traditions and Performance Practices.” The Choral Journal 32, no. 4 (November 1991): 15–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23548375.

Dett, R. Nathaniel. “R. Nathaniel Dett Reader: Essays on Black Sacred Music.” Jon Michael Spencer, ed. Special issue, Black Sacred Music: A Journal of Theomusicology 5, no. 2 (Fall 1991).

Guenther, Eileen. “Cultural Appropriation: Who Is Entitled to Sing Spirituals?” The Hymn: A Journal of Song 71, no. 4 (Autumn 2020): 44–46.

Lloyd, Thomas. “’Shout All over God's Heaven!” How the African-American Spiritual Has Maintained Its Integrity in the Face of Social and Musical Challenges.” The Choral Journal 45, no. 1 (Aug. 2004): 9–25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23555217.

Maultsby, Portia K. “Black Spirituals: An Analysis of Textual Forms and Structures.” The Black Perspective in Music 4, no. 1 (Spring 1976): 54–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1214403.

Trice, Patricia J. “Unaccompanied Choral Arrangements of African-American Spirituals: The ‘Signifying’ Tradition Continues.” The Choral Journal 34, no. 7 (Feb. 1994): 15–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23549823.

Digital Resources

MorningStar Music. “Spirituals Roundtable with André Thomas, Anton Armstrong, Eileen Guenther and Mark Lawson.” YouTube. August 11, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yeiGNRnpMM.

Three on 3 Music. “5th Annual Negro Spiritual Symposium.” YouTube. February 13, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRZF5aw6Cmg.