On to more Spiritual matters...

No-one would deny that Christianity has contributed a huge amount to musical culture of the world. Afterall, written music has its origins there and hymns have made up most of the backbone of modern music. Still, I personally believe that the negro spiritual has been the best expression of christianity through music. Maybe its the simple unpretentiousness of them or their association with slavery - thus lending a certain authenticity to the messages and morals - or maybe, I dunno, I just don't like white people's religious music. Regardless, they make up one of the greatest repetoires of folk songs in history and are perhaps more important than any other genre of the 18th and 19th century.

Actually, I'm going to start this post with a song that was not originally a negro spiritual, or even an American song, but which was later inaliably identified with the genre. That song is, of course, "Amazing Grace".

Now if you're one of those genuinely strange people who doesn't know this song, here's a recording by Judy Collins from the early 70's. Generally, I don't like Judy Collins, because she represents a horribly, horribly polished and fake branch of so-called "folk music", but her recording of this, backed by a choir, is pretty perfect:



"Amazing Grace" is one of the oldest songs I'll be dealing with on this blog,it was published in 1779 by ex-slave trader John Newton. This is significant - there were absolutely shiteloads of hymns written in the 17th and 18th century and if we were simply dealing with Christian hymns that influenced negro spirituals I could come up with any number by the likes of Isaac Watts. What makes "Amazing Grace" significant is that it was written by an ex-slave trade trader in (allegedly) a fit of religious and moral guilt over his profession and the song became something of an anthem for the whole abolitionist movement and later for enslaved African-Americans.


The symbol used by the Quakers and other abolitionists in Britain in the 18th century - "Am I not a man and a brother?"

Ironically, this most theistically uplifting of musical genres grew out of cultural opression and repression - when African slaves were brought to America, all elements of their African culture and heritage was obliterated; they were all brought under the arm of Christianity and had any attempts at breaking into African songs or rituals forcefully beaten out of them. When sitting in church, benches would be pushed close together to prevent the slaves from getting up and dancing.

To quote negrospirituals.com:

Rural slaves used to stay after the regular worship services, in churches or in plantation “praise houses”, for singing and dancing. But, slaveholders did not allow dancing and playing drums, as usual in Africa. They also had meetings at secret places (“camp meetings”, “bush meetings”), because they needed to meet one another and share their joys, pains and hopes. In rural meetings, thousands slaves were gathered and listened to itinerant preachers, and sang spirituals, for hours. In the late 1700s, they sang the precursors of spirituals, which were called “corn ditties”.

However, the very basis of Christianity condemns slavery as a sin and it is this fact that eventually made Christianity the enemy of slavery and a tool for its abolition. Trying to provide a timeline for negro spirituals is practically impossible, since, even compared to white folk songs, documentation of the songs is practically non-existant. However, there were a few books published in the mid 19th century that were collections of negro slave songs, often including spirituals, the first and most significant being "Slave Songs Of The United States" in 1867.



If you want to actually read the book, here's a full scan of it:

http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/allen/allen.html

Not a lot of the songs documented are that well known today, but there are a few that are pretty famous. The most famous is probably "Michael, Row The Boat Ashore". It was big during the American 1960's folk revival and, as such, here's a version by Pete Seeger from 1963:



Pete can get on my tits sometimes with his often patronising attitude, but this is pretty cool. Another well known song from the book is "Nobody Knows the Trouble I Seen", sung here by legendary "voice of God" Paul Robeson:



One of the most popular and lasting negro spirituals is "Go Down, Moses", also known as "Let My People Go". Unlike a lot of spirituals, the song is not jubilant and uplifting, but sombre and ominous - the song's relevance has no doubt been emphasised due to the obvious parallels made between the plight of the Israelites and African-American slaves. I mean, it is one of the few slave songs that actually contains the phrase "Let my people go" and so has been put forward as one of the great songs of defiance and determination. The song was first published in 1872 by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the premiere black vocal group of the era, but some sources have dated the song as having been sung as early as 1853. One of the best versions of the song is from Preston Sturges' 1941 existentialist screwball comedy, "Sullivan's Travels":



Probably the most famous negro spiritual is "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". Interestingly, the song had an official author, Wallis Willis, a freedman (newly emancipated slave) who composed the song sometime before 1862. Whether he based it on an earlier song he had heard or actually thought it up himself doesn't really matter, though - the song became basically the anthem for African-Americans and arguably remains so until this day, although I'd like to suggest it has more universal status. It has been suggested that the lyrics to the song referenced the "underground railroad", the secret means for slaves to escape to the freed states. It was popularised by the Fisk Jubilee Singers starting in the 1870's and took from there. If, somehow, you haven't actually heard this song, you're probably sectioned. But still, here's a version by vocalist(and clearly a massive Paul Robeson fan) Kevin Maynor. Trying to find decent versions of this song is hard, bytheway, because almost all the versions I see are either "clever reinterpretations" (shite) or sung by overdramatic "soulful" singers (really shite):



After the abolition of slavery, the most famous singers of negro spirituals were the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a group of African-American students from Fisk University who formed in 1871 as something of reaction against the blackface minstrel shows who claimed to bring the "authentic" sound of the freed black slaves to the stage.



The Fisk Singers were an acapella vocal group whose dignified and, admittedly, middle-class renditions of negro songs (and a few Stephen Foster songs) provoked both praise and criticism across America and Europe. Probably for the same reason in both cases - they didn't confirmed to the stereotyped image of blacks that had been instilled in people's minds. They still exist today as a group, albeit (shockingly) with none of the original members; it is something of a tradition in Fisk University. The original Fisk singers made recordings as early as the turn of the century, but they often sound very old and creaky today. A lot of them can be found public domain on the internet, but here's a very good recording made in 1926 of "Keep A' Inchin' Along":



With the birth of various new recording markets, spirituals became widely spread throughout popular culture. Even genres like the supposedly Satanic medium of the blues and the supposedly white-washed country music recorded a lot of negro spirituals.

Artists like Blind Willie Johnson and the Reverend Gary Davis who were usually (and inaccurately) labelled as country blues artists had repetoire composed almost entirely of religious material, albeit played with a bluesy, raggy guitar accompaniment. Here's Reverend Gary Davis playing "Children of Zion" and looking badass on Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest in the mid 1960's:



And take this beautiful version of "All God's Chillun Got Wings" by cowboy vocal group, the Sons Of The Pioneers - a great defence against the percieved image of country music as white washed or racist:



In the 1940's, Thomas A. Dorsey combined the negro spiritual with jazz, R&B and pop influences and created gospel music. Gospel music is often thought of as interchangable with the negro spiritual, but it really is a very different kind of music - take a listen to this recording of the Golden Gate Quartet, one of the most popular gospel groups of the 30',s 40's and 50's singing the negro spiritual, "Joshua Fit The Battle" in the gospel style:



Of course, in the 20th century, negro spirituals had their biggest revival during the civil rights movements, but that's really an issue for another time....

Twang goose, muds!

American Artist No. 3: Stephen Foster

Although I have to admit this site is getting known for insanely OTT statements like this, I'm going to say it anyway:

Stephen Foster was, and is, the most influential and important American songwriter in American history.

And this actually more an official consensus, rather than any personal hyperbole - everyone on the planet knows his songs. If you don't, then you're probably living in a crater in the middle of the Atlantic with your ears fused shut. Stephen Foster's melodies are familiar across the world, even if he himself is not known as the author.

Take this version of "Camptown Races", by the 2nd South Carolina String Band (a band who make some terrific covers of his songs) and tell me that you don't know this:



Stephen Foster was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1826, of Irish descent, had only a brief education, was influenced by minstrels songs, parlor songs, German classical, negro songs and in the 19th century he set out to do something utterly batshit crazy - write songs for a living.

It's hard to imagine in these days of commercial music, but in the early half of the 19th century it was not considered a viable profession to be an official songwriter. If you wrote songs, it was because you were a performer and you charge money for your performances, not the songs. And of course, the songs were not worth anything - they were merely ditties, not at all worthy of esteem or social value like classical compositions. And, unfortunately for Steve, that's pretty much how it was for him, as a man out of his time - his songs were plagiarised, since there was no concept of copyright for songs in those days and since he wasn't a performer, he died penniless and impoverished at the age of 37.

What he left behind was, to that point, the most sophisticated, unique, memorable and oft-imitated body of songs in America. His work ranged from blackface minstrel songs, to parlour songs, to love ballads, to anti-slavery laments and whatever else he felt like. The most significant innovation was probably his ability to take the previously low form of music, the minstrel or "ethiopian" song and elevate it to a new status - he attempted to, in his own words, "build up taste...among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order."

One of his first big hits, published on February 25th, 1848 was "Oh! Susanna". One of the most perfect songs in the history of the world, like, ever, it was ostensibly a minstrel song, sung from the point of view of a black man, using the, *sigh*, dialect that was so popular at the time. The lyrics are partly nonsense:

I came from Alabama wid my banjo on my knee,
I'm g'wan to Louisiana, my true love for to see
It raind all night the day I left, the weather it was dry
The sun so hot I froze to death; Susanna, don't you cry.

But they have a genuine anthemic, emotional backbone to them. The song did contain a verse that is more than a tad inflammatory in today's eyes:

I jump'd aboard the telegraph and trabbled down de ribber,
De lectrick fluid magnified, and kill'd five hundred Nigga.
De bulgine bust and de hoss ran off, I really thought I'd die;
I shut my eyes to hold my bref -- Susanna don't you cry

Accusing Stephen Foster of racism is pretty much pointless - in 1848, even "Uncle Tom's Cabin" hadn't been published yet; considering black people even human was a radical notion to some people, so to empathise and try to emulate them like Stephen Foster did probably made him quite liberal for the day. So to try and condemn him for using dated terms like "nigger" or "darkie" over 150 years ago is ridiculous. On the other hand, I do think it does undermine the emotional impact of the song for it to performed nowadays using those lyrics.

This version by the 2nd South Carolina String band is clever - it basically changes a single letter to make the word "chigger" instead, which is basically a bed-bug. It doesn't matter since its essentially nonsense, but it fits seamlessly. This version is beyond perfect in every measure:



He wrote many other minstrel songs like "Ring De Banjo", "Nelly Bly" and "Uncle Ned", but never topped "Oh! Susanna" in this area. He did also write parlor songs for the more middle-class market, like "I Dream of Jeannie With The Light Brown Hair" and "Hard Times Come Again No More" which weren't radically different from his minstrel songs beyond the fact that they weren't written in a "dialect". Here's a recording of the latter song (written in 1854) by a certain Bob Dylan fellow from 1993. Although Bob's voice was at an all time low at this point, he does actually sing the song properly, presumably because it wasn't one of his own songs:



Steve's songs were incdrebily popular with minstrel performers like Dan Emmett and E.P. Christy, but they weren't so keen on giving him the credit for the. Likewise, publishers would often publish his songs without credit. Since there was no legal defence for songwriters in those times, he basically got royally screwed over throughout his whole career.

Another interesting thing to note about Stephen Foster is that, although he wrote a lot of songs about the Southern states and was most associated with them, he only visited the South once, on a steamboat trip on his honeymoon.

Perhaps Foster's magnum opus was written in 1863, "Old Black Joe". The song combined all his previous work in the fields of minstrel songs, parlor songs and spiritual ballads. The song is a tale that was popular in the late half of the 19th century, that of the aged slave (or ex-slave) living his last days, lamenting for his long gone friends and family and his desire to join them in the after life. It's a theme that would explored again in songs like "Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane", but Steve's song is the most poignant, with the haunting chorus refrain of:

I'm coming, I'm coming, for my head is bending low
I hear their gentle voices calling Old Black Joe.

Although sung from the point of view of a black man, it's not written in a dialect, which was pretty rare for the time and paint a sympathetic but also dignified portrayal, with little of the patronisation that existed in other minstrel songs. Here's a recording from the 1930's by Cowboy group, The Sons of the Pioneers:



Still, like I said, Steve wasn't making a lot of money and on January 13th 1864 he died in a Hotel in New York, with only 35 cents in his pocket. However, his songs lasted and became renowned throughout the world. They were routinely taught in American schools, although this abated somewhat in the 1960's after the Civil Rights movement claimed that many of Stephen Fosters songs were racially insensitive. Kind of ironic, since Stephen Foster came to fame in the first place through his attempts to be sensitive to African-American culture.

Today, another re-evalutation has been going on which argues against the claim of racially insensitivity, but it's unlikely to be a debate which'll close any time soon. Partly it's probably due to the sheer influence of his songs - no-one would give a rat's ass about Will Hayes, or Henry Clay Work's racially themed material from the same era, but Steve's song are so well known that they have come to represent America's musical culture more than any other and thus attract far more debate and controversy than any other songwriter of the time.

The main point about Stephen Foster is the songs themselves and they are truly beautiful - he was the first songwriter who actually saw the value in an original melody, rather than one merely stolen from a traditional song and he saw that the simple medium of the "song" could be just as relevant as any classical composition. He was a humble, shy figure from all accounts (just look at that photo at the top) and would probably never have believed his songs would cause the kerfuffle they have done over the century.

So, until I hear those gentle voices calling...


Monument to Stephen Foster, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania