What is African American Spirituals?
African American Spirituals are sacred folk songs created by enslaved Africans and their descendants in the United States between the 17th and 19th centuries. These songs were created by enslaved Africans after their arrival in North America between 1619 and 1860, representing one of the largest and most significant forms of American folksong. Spirituals synthesized West African musical practices—including call-and-response, polyrhythms, improvisation, and communal participation—with Christian hymns and biblical narratives, creating a distinct musical form that served simultaneously as worship, communication, protest, and cultural preservation.
Origins & Lineage
Enslaved Africans brought to America during the 18th century took their own musical traditions and combined them with Christian hymns to create what were later acknowledged as African-American spirituals. The conversion of the enslaved masses to Christianity in the early 19th century facilitated the development of the Negro spiritual as a distinct form of American religious music. The first documented reports of distinctive black religious singing date from the beginning of the nineteenth century, though the oral tradition existed earlier.
Spirituals developed in two distinct contexts: plantation fields and what scholars call the “invisible church.” The “invisible church” refers to secret religious gatherings formed by enslaved African Americans when they were denied freedom to worship openly, taking place in remote areas such as woods, cabins, or secluded clearings. Although its exact provenance is unknown, spirituals were identifiable as a genre by the early 19th century.
The preservation and popularization of spirituals owes much to the Fisk Jubilee Singers. This a cappella group of nine students from Fisk University was organized in 1871 to raise money for their financially troubled institution. The original Jubilee Singers introduced slave songs to the world in 1871 and were instrumental in preserving this unique American musical tradition known today as Negro spirituals. Their tours throughout the United States and Europe brought spirituals to mainstream audiences and resulted in the first published transcriptions of these oral traditions.
How It’s Practiced
Spirituals exhibit distinctive musical characteristics rooted in African traditions. Spirituals demonstrated many characteristics of African music: intense emotion, call and response, polyrhythms, bent notes, blue notes, repetition of rhythmic figures, off-beat phrasings, and body percussion. Spirituals are typically sung in a call and response form, with a leader improvising a line of text and a chorus of singers providing a solid refrain in unison.
The songs fall into two main categories: “sorrow songs” are intense, slow and melancholic, while “jubilees” or “camp meeting songs” are fast, rhythmic and often syncopated. Biblical narratives provided the primary lyrical content. Many spirituals centered on faithful servants of God like Noah, Daniel, and Jonah who were saved from a sinful world of oppression, with Moses being one of the most commonly-referenced people as his story of delivering the Israelites from bondage resonated with enslaved African Americans.
African-American spirituals are not usually written down or notated like music in the European-American classical tradition, as enslaved African-Americans were almost always forbidden to learn how to read or write, so they passed down songs as part of a vibrant oral tradition. The performance itself was the most important element, as this was participatory music not intended for an audience.
African American Spirituals Today
Spirituals continue to be encountered through multiple channels. In classical music contexts, prominent classically trained artists such as Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes and Paul Robeson spotlighted spirituals in their repertoires in the 1920s and 1930s, with the tradition continuing into more recent times with classical stars like Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman. Contemporary gospel music preserves the lyrics of many spirituals, though musical forms have changed dramatically as harmonies are added and the tunes arranged to suit new performance styles.
Spirituals experienced renewed prominence during the Civil Rights Movement. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, spirituals and Gospel songs supported efforts of civil rights activists, with many “freedom songs” like “Oh, Freedom!” and “Eyes on the Prize” adapted from old spirituals. Arthur C. Jones founded “The Spirituals Project” at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music to preserve and revitalize the music and teachings of the sacred folk songs called spirituals.
Recordings of traditional spirituals exist in institutional archives. Forms of the traditional spiritual continue to survive in some conservative congregations of the South, with many recordings of rural spirituals made between 1933 and 1942 housed in the American Folklife Center collections at the Library of Congress.
Common Misconceptions
Spirituals are often confused with gospel music, but they are distinct genres. Gospel music incorporates instrumental accompaniment and relies on New Testament themes, whereas spirituals originated from African American slaves and often focused on Old Testament stories. Whereas spirituals focused on the afterlife as a source of eventual freedom, gospel songs focused on the here and now—how to get through each day. Gospel emerged in the 20th century, while spirituals date to the slavery era.
The debate over coded messages in spirituals remains contentious. While popular belief holds that songs contained detailed escape instructions for the Underground Railroad, evidence is mixed. There is evidence that Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman used at least two songs, with Sarah Bradford’s 1869 biography quoting Tubman as saying she used “Go Down Moses” as one of two code songs to communicate with fugitive enslaved people. However, some skeptics claim that songs of the Underground Railroad is an urban legend dating from the later 20th century, picked up by credulous authors and published as fact without historical documentation. The truth likely lies between: spirituals certainly carried double meanings and expressed yearning for freedom, but claims of specific route maps remain difficult to verify.
Spirituals should not be romanticized as purely joyful expressions. African-American spirituals emerged from a mix of the brutal institution of slavery, Christian influences and African culture. They were survival tools as much as artistic expressions.
How to Begin
For those seeking to encounter spirituals authentically, several paths exist. Listen to archival field recordings at the Library of Congress American Folklife Center, which preserve traditional performance styles unmediated by concert hall conventions. The 1909 recording of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, inducted into the National Recording Registry, represents an important early documentation.
For performed repertoire, seek out historically informed ensembles that preserve traditional call-and-response structures rather than solely arranged versions. The Moving Star Hall Singers of Johns Island, South Carolina, represent continuity with older traditions. Study arrangements by composers like Henry T. Burleigh, who created early 20th-century piano-voice settings, but understand these represent a transformation from oral folk practice to written art song.
For scholarly context, consult John Lovell Jr.'s Black Song: The Forge and the Flame or Henry Edward Krehbiel’s Afro-American Folksongs (1914). Documentary resources include the PBS American Experience film “Jubilee Singers: Sacrifice and Glory” (1999) and primary sources such as Slave Songs of the United States (1867), the first major published collection.