HOW TO UNDERSTAND AND ENJOY NEGRO SPIRITUALS

By James Weldon Johnson

Fifty years ago those who loved Negro Spirituals, unless they had the privilege of going South, waited for an opportunity to hear the famous Fisk Jubilee Singers. A decade or two later they could hear them sung also by the quartettes of Hampton, Atlanta and Tuskegee. Today the Spirituals can be heard with frequency from the concert stage, given in the programs of both white and colored singers. The Spirituals, at the present time, have a vogue. Indeed, they have a popularity that brings them dangerously near to being a fad. And, today, those who love the Spirituals or are interested in learning about them do not wait to hear them sung; they buy them, take them home and try them over. The results, however, are not always completely satisfactory. For in spite of their apparent simplicity, the Spirituals offer some difficulties for those who are not familiar with them. In fact, it is this seeming simplicity that is the most baffling thing about them. It may therefore be worth while to say something about the understanding and appreciation of these songs necessary for the fullest enjoyment of them.

To begin with, it is necessary to know something of the origin and history of the Spirituals, and of what they have meant in the experiences of the people who created them. It is also necessary to know something of their peculiar characteristics. There

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are many persons who have heard these songs sung only on the
vaudeville or theatrical stage and have laughed uproariously at
them because they were presented in a comic vein. Such people have
no true conception of the Spirituals; they probably think of them
as a new sort of jazz and have no idea of the manner in which they
really should be sung. And there are those who err almost as
grievously in another direction; they think the Spirituals should
be rendered like German lieder or French love songs. Either of
these conceprions is doomed to failure, so far as true interpreta-
tion is concerned.

Let us first briefly consider from whence these songs
sprang - these songs unsurpassed among the folk songs of the world
and, in the poignancy of their beauty, unequaled. A little over
three hundred years ago a Dutch vessel landed twenty African natives
at Jamestown, Virginia. They were quickly bought and made indentured
servants, or slaves, by the colonial settlers. This was the beginning
of the slave trade in this country. To supply this trade Africa was
raped of literally millions of men, women and children. Hundreds
of thousands never reached these shores, but as many as survived
the horrors of the passage were immediately thrown into slavery
and held in servitude for approximately two hundred and fifty years.
It was from these people in bondage this mass of noble music sprang;
this music which is America's only folk music and, up to this time,
the finest distinctive contribution she has to offer the world.

I term this music noble and I do so without any qualifications. For example, there is not a nobler theme in the whole

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musical literature of the world than Go Down Moses. If the Negro had voiced himself in only that one song he would have given evidence of his nobility of soul. When in addition we consider Deep River, Stand Still Jordan, Roll Jordan Roll, I'm Troubled In Mind, Walk Together Children, Ride On King Jesus, we catch a spirit that is a little more than mere nobility; it is something akin to majestic grandeur. The characteristic nobility which can be felt or sensed in the Spirituals is due in a very large measure to the fact that their inspiration is spiritual; and in this they are unique among the folk songs of the world. Early in the Negro's history in this country there was at hand the precise religion for the condition in which he found himself thrust. Far from his native land and customs, despised by those among whom he lived, experiencing the pang of the separation of loved ones on the auction block, knowing the hard taskmaster, feeling the lash, the Negro seized Christianity, the religion of compensations in the life to come for the ills suffered in the present existence, the religion which implied the hope that in the next world there would be a reversal of conditions, of rich man and poor man, of proud and meek, of master and slave. The result was a body of songs voicing all the cardinal virtues of Christianity - patience - forbearance - love - faith - and hope - through a necessarily modified form of primitive African music. The Negro took complete refuge in Christianity, and the Spirituals were literally forged of sorrow in the heat of religious fervor. They exhibited, moreover, a reversion to the

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simple principles of primitive, communal Christianity.

The thought that the Negro might have refused or failed to adopt Christianity - and there were several good reasons for such an outcome, one being the vast gulf between the Christianity that was preached to him and the Christianity practiced by those who preached it - leads to some curious speculations. One thing is certain, there would have been no Negro Spirituals. His musical instinct would doubtless have manifested itself; but is it conceivable that he could have created a body of songs in any other form so unique in the musical literature of the world and with such a powerful and universal appeal as the Spirituals? Indeed, the question arises, would he have been able to survive slavery in the way in which he did? It is not possible to estimate the sustaining influence that the story of the trials and tribulations of the Jews as related in the Old Testament exerted upon the Negro. This story at once caught and fired the imaginations of the Negro bards, and they sang, sang their hungry listeners into a firm faith that as God saved Daniel in the lion's den, so would He save them; as God preserved the Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, so would He preserve them; as God delivered Israel out of bondage in Egypt, so would He deliver them. How much this firm faith had to do with the Negro's physical and spiritual survival of two and a half centuries of slavery cannot be known.

Thus it was by sheer spiritual forces that African chants were metamorphosed into the Spirituals; that upon the fundamental throb of African rhythms were reared those reaches of melody that

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rise above earth and soar into the pure ethereal blue. And this
is the miracle of the creation of the Spirituals.

Without these facts in mind these songs cannot be under-
stood. Of course, it is pardonable to smile at the naïveté often
exhibited in the words, but it should be remembered that in
scarcely no instance was anything humorous intended. The makers
of a song, when it came to the use of words, was struggling as
best he could under his limitations in language, and, perhaps, also
under a misconstruction or misapprehension of the facts in his
source of material, generally the Bible. And, too, it ought to be
remembered that often, like his more literary poetic brothers, he
had to do a good many things to get his rhyme in. But almost
always he was deadly in earnest. The Spirituals have a primitive
dignity in which they must always be clothed if they are to be
properly appreciated.

Going a little deeper into the subject, true interpretation
of all Negro music depends fundamentally upon the ability to sense
its rhythms or, in other words, to catch the "swing" of it. In
this there is involved the basic difference between Negro, or
African, music and the music of Western Europe and America. Speak-
ing generally, the European concept of music is melody, tune, and
the African concept is rhythm. Melody has, relatively, small
place in African music, and harmony still less; but in rhythms
African music is beyond comparison with any other music in the
world. In my Preface to the Book of American Negro Spirituals I
have gone more fully into this phase of the subject than space
here could possibly allow me. I can here only summarize briefly

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and say: The Spirituals possess the fundamental characteristic of African music in that they have the same striking rhythmic quality. Indeed, their rhythm is of their very essence. You may do almost anything to the Spirituals, except fail to catch the "swing", and not entirely destroy their beauty.

In all authentic American Negro music the rhythms may be divided roughly into two classes - rhythms based on the swinging of head and body and rhythms based on the patting of hands and feet. Again, speaking roughly, the rhythms of the Spirituals fall in the first class and the rhythms of Negro secular music in the second class. The "swing" of the Spirituals is a rather subtle and elusive thing. It is subtle and elusive because it is in perfect union with the religious ecstacy that manifests itself in the swaying bodies of a whole congregation, swaying as if responding to the baton of some extremely sensitive conductor. So it is difficult, if not impossible, to sing these songs sitting or standing coldly still and at the same time capture the spontaneous "swing" which, as I have said, is of their very essence. This "swing" is the more subtle and elusive because there is a still further intricacy in the rhythms. The swinging of the body marks the regular beat or, better, surge, for it is something stronger than a beat; at the same time, the swaying of the head marks the surge off in shorter waves than does the body. The Negro loves nothing better in his music than to play with the fundamental time beat. He will, as it were, take the fundamental beat and pound it out with his left hand almost monotonously, while with his right hand he

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jiggles it. There is a close similarity between these rhythmic
patterns and the beating of the big drum and the little drums by
African natives.

In addition to the "swing" of the Spirituals, there are
the curious turns and quavers and the intentional striking of
certain notes just off the key with which the Negro loves to em-
bellish his songs. These characteristics and peculiarities do
constitute difficulties in singing the Spirituals for those who
are not more or less familiar with them, but it is not necessary
to say that the lack of complete mastery of all these difficulties
is not at all fatal to drawing pleasure from singing these songs.
A group does not have to be able to sing with the fervor and abandon
of a Negro congregation to enjoy them. Nor does one have to be a
Hayes or a Robeson or a Johnson or a Gordon to give others an idea
of their beauty and power. There are two chief things to be re-
membered by those who are interested in the Spirituals and wish to
enjoy singing them: First, no matter how intricate the secondary
rhythms may be, the fundamental beat or surge, which may be measured
by the swaying of the body, should _never be lost_; second, the
capacity to feel these songs while singing them is more important
than any amount of mere artistic technique.

Something should be said in a general way about the
"language" in which these songs were written. Negro dialect in
America is the result of the effort of the slave to establish to
establish a medium of communication between himself and his master.
This he did by dropping his original language and formulating a
phonologically and gramatically simplified English; that is, an

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English in which the harsh and difficult sounds were elided, and
the secondary moods and tenses were eliminated. Of course, it is
not necessary to be an expert in Negro dialect to sing the Spirituals,
but most of them lose in charm when they are sung in straight English.
For example, it would be next to sacrilege to render:

"What kinda shoes you gwine to weah?"

by

"What kind of shoes are you going to wear?"

Let me again refer to the Preface to The Book of American
Negro Spirituals, and say that there I've laid down the general
principles of Negro dialect and its pronunciation. Here I can only
say that the main thing to remember about the dialect is that it is
fundamentally English and that its distinctness is much more a
matter of pronunciation than of idiom. It is an English that has
been softened down and made more musical by cutting out the harsh sounds
and ignoring the troublesome consonants that keep syllables and
words from running one into the other. For these reasons the
dialect is a much easier medium for singers than is straight English.
With a general idea of the principles of the dialect a singer may
give even Negro songs written in straight English the proper color.
One should always avoid overdoing the dialect; that is worse than
no dialect.

There are many beauties in the Spirituals that will
richly repay those who interest themselves in these songs: beauties
of melody, beauties of harmony, and beauties of poetry, too. As
the New York World in a recent editorial said about the Spirituals,
"Poetry like this, with the music that goes with it, touches the
stars. Let us doff our hats to the race that brought it into being.