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The Negro Spirtuals
Spirituals—Origins
For more than a century a controversy has raged concerning the origin of the spirituals originally sung by African-Americans in the South and about their relationship to the religious songs of whites. Where did the spirituals of African-Americans come from? What is their relationship, if any, to the music of West Africa and to that of Europe? Do the spirituals of African-Americans exhibit to a high degree or to a low degree cultural traits derived from West Africa? Or are these spirituals primarily borrowings from the culture of the white man?
It was at first assumed that Black spirituals represented, in essence, the spontaneous out- burst and expression of the anguish experienced by human beings in bondage, that is, of African- American slaves. An early writer on the topic, James Weldon Johnson, wrote:
"Aframerican folk art, an art by Africa out of America, Negro creative genius working under the spur and backlash of American conditions, is unlike anything else in America or elsewhere, nor could it have been possible in any other place or in any other times"
(James Weldon Johnson papers, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.).
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