Religious Music: Spirituals

You can read more about the history of negro spirituals at NegroSpirtuals.Com.

Listen to the short documentary in the video clip below, then describe what you think are the “spirituals”.



Negro spirituals can readily be identified as a type of folk music – “the music of the people”. Crossroads in Music (p. 63) explains that “folk music communicates on a direct personal level and is readily accepted by a large percentage of the population. An important defining feature of folk music is the anonymity of its creators. In addition, it is usually performed by amateurs and – at least in recent years – has been most often transmitted by oral tradition…”

“The spiritual is the first combining of African and European elements” (Crossroads in Music, p. 104). Negro spiritual are the songs that were originally sung by African-American slaves and were one of the main influences from which Gospel music, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, country and rock ‘n roll would eventually evolve.

There are basically two types of spiritual: the leader-chorus and the verse-and-refrain. “The leader-chorus type closely resembles the call and response type so characteristic of African singing: in both, lines of text sung by a soloist alternate with a sung group response. Songs that tell a story are often in verse and refrain, the action is told in a series of verses, and each verse is followed by a refrain . . . Spirituals often combined the two types. Singers would raise and lower notes, slide from note to note, and add melodic embellishments to emphasize the emotional content of the words. These traits closely resembled the traditional elements of African singing” (Crossroads in Music, p. 104).

Water is a common theme in spirituals because it had both a spiritual meaning as well as a practical value. Spiritually water refers to baptism and the washing away of sins. Jesus also identified Himself as the source of Living Water, the source of Everlasting Life. On a practical level slaves fleeing from the slave masters were admonished to “Wade in the Water,” so that they could not easily be tracked. The word “wade” means to walk through shallow water.

Listen to Yolanda Rhodes singing “Wade in the Water”:



Another famous water-themed spiritual is “Take me to the Water (to Be Baptised)”, sung here by Nina Simone.



Listen to Alison Krauss singing “As I went down to the river to pray”


To be free from slavery was about both freedom from their physical slave masters, but also free from their spiritual slave master – namely Satan and sin. The song “Steal Away” is an example of a song that reflects this double meaning. Listen to “Steal Away” as sung by Mahalia Jackson and Nat King Cole.



Apart from “Amazing Grace”, one of the most famous spirituals is “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” Listen to it in the YouTube-video below. This version by Etta James starts to sound more like Gospel Music – which we will take a look at in the next post. You can also listen to a Gospel rendition of "Amazing Grace" by Aretha Franklin below that.





How do you think spiritual music differ from Gospel music?