ABSTRACT
This study examines African American songs as an embodiment of
black American identity, experience, socio-economic realities, and
African Americans‟ perception of the world located as they are within
the American society. Although, the subject of African American Music
has produced a large and varied literature, the inattention to questions
of beauty and functions of the songs seem to neglect the contribution
and distinctiveness of the genre in addressing the African American
crisis and predicament. In an attempt to fill this gap, the study
focuses on selected songs of two song types belonging to the black
tradition - Spirituals and early Gospel Songs of Charles Albert Tindley
and Thomas Dorsey - as forms which widely explain the circumstances of
black life in white dominated America. In particular, the study attempts
to establish the aesthetic and utilitarian values of the aforesaid song
types. In order to achieve the goals of the study, twelve songs are
analysed: six songs from each song style. They include “De Winter‟ll Soon be Ober,” “I Got Shoes,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “We are Clim‟in‟ Jacob‟s Ladder,”“Crucifixion,” and “Soon I Will Be Done.” Others include: “I‟ll Overcome Someday,” “We‟ll Understand It Better By and By,” “Here I May Be Weak and Poor (God Will Provide for Me),”“Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” “Peace in the Valley” and “I‟m Going to Live the Life I Sing About in My Song.” A
close scrutiny of the songs reveals two important issues. The first
illustrates that the two vernacular styles, developed at different times
and environments, provide and at times share a definitive set of
aesthetic and stylistic features. Some of them include: allegory,
allusion, rhyme, repetition, verse and chorus structure,
call-and-response pattern, improvisation, amongst others. Second, the
artistic forms – Negro Spiritual and Gospel Songs, - beyond their
religious functions, serve as expressive outlets of social, cultural and
political circumstances of African American life within the United
States. To drive the point home, Postcolonial theory is
employed as a theoretical tool. This framework facilitates the
examination of the colonial experience of African Americans in terms of
the oppressive form of slavery and its effects on their social and
cultural spheres. It also examines the way the two musical styles under
study serve as African Americans‟ creative, artistic responses and
subtle forms of resistance to the oppressions and race-based
discrimination in the mainland of America. This approach in the study
stretches backwards from the colonial past of American slavery to the
dynamics of neo-colonialism in the early decades of the twentieth
century.
Chapter One
1.0 Background to the Study
Negro Spirituals and Gospel Songs are part of the vernacular
traditions of the African American people. The vernacular traditions
point to black oral forms, creatively created through each phase of the
African American culture and presence in the United States. It is a
dynamic and continuous process of expressions that chiefly rely on the
medium of language in mirroring and evaluating black experience within
the American society. Ralph Ellison cited in Gates and Mckay (1997:02)
argues that the “vernacular art accounts, to a large degree, for the
black American‟s legacy of self-awareness and endurance.” In other
words, the constant contact between black and white in the United States
produced in African Americans a profound anxiety with regards to their
status and quest for equality and justice. In the light of this, the
varied expressions of vernacular art portray the long struggle for
freedom, better life and dignity over the centuries, and the African
Americans‟ attempt to humanize an often harsh world through expressive
modes. Therefore, the African American vernacular:
consists of forms sacred – songs, prayers, and sermons – as
well as secular – work songs, secular rhymes and songs, blues jazz, and
stories of many kinds. It also consists of dances… (Gates and
Mckay 1997:03).
Although the aforementioned forms vary in their aesthetic
qualities, the vernacular forms share traits that reflect African
background. Some of the traits include call/response patterns, dance
beats (both in musical form and in the rhythm of a tale or rhyme), group
creation, and most importantly, improvisation (Mckay 1997:04).