Were You There Negro Spiritual

The American spiritual “Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)” was first published in 1899.

What is a Negro spiritual and what is its origin?

Negro spirituals are songs written by Africans who were abducted and sold into slavery in the United States. Over time, these slaves and their offspring accepted their owners' faith, Christianity.

Who created the Negro spiritual?

The American Negro Spirituals are folk songs written by enslaved Africans between 1619 and 1860 after their arrival in North America. Although slavery ended on January 1, 1863, when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, enslaved persons in Texas did not receive word until June 19, 1865, hence the Juneteenth Celebration.

The songs written and performed by enslaved women, men, and children were born in North America, and they tell their stories of life, death, faith, hope, escape, and survival with dignity, fortitude, and occasionally joy. These tunes and stories were passed down orally from generation to generation in plantation fields, churches, and camp meetings, and they have now found their way onto concert hall stages and recital series all around the world. Some may wonder why NATS picked the designation “American Negro Spiritual” rather than a more modern word like “African-American Spirituals.” “The term ‘American Negro Spirituals' speaks to the history, the suffering, the hope, and the resolve of a people who were able to sing through their suffering and tell and re-tell their heroic stories of triumph and survival through these songs,” says Dr. Everett McCorvey, founder of the American Spiritual Ensemble and a researcher in this field. It's a narrative and a chapter in history that should never be forgotten. And, despite the fact that the songs were written at a very sad moment in American history, they are now sung, honored, and adored all around the world. While some of the music's text has been modified to make it more contemporary and to remove dialect barriers, the melodies, sentiments, and stories of the spirituals are almost 400 years old and must be sung and remembered. I would advise teachers and performers to be comfortable naming songs by their proper names. “American Negro Spirituals” is their name. Please feel free to refer to them as “Negro Spirituals,” “Spirituals,” or “American Negro Spirituals,” but the ultimate goal is for everyone to enjoy and sing these melodies.

University of Kentucky Professor of Voice and Endowed Chair in Opera Studies (Lexington, Kentucky)

When was the first Negro spiritual?

Plantation songs, slave songs, freedom songs, and Underground Railway songs are all examples of African-American spirituals, which were originally oral until the end of the US Civil War. There has been “significant collection and preservation of spirituals as folk music heritage” since the Civil War and emancipation. In 1867, two years after the war ended, the first collection of black spirituals was published. It was composed by three northern abolitionists, Charles Pickard Ware (1840-1921), Lucy McKim Garrison (1842-1877), and William Francis Allen (1842-1877), and named Slave Songs of the United States (1830-1889) The 1867 collection was based on Charles P. Ware's full collection, which he had primarily collected in Coffin's Point, St. Helena Island, South Carolina, home of the African-American Gullah people who originated in West Africa. The majority of the songs in the 1867 book were collected directly from African Americans. “Plantation tunes,” “real slave songs,” and “Negro melodies” had all become extremely popular by the 1830s. “Spurious imitations” for greater “sentimental tastes” were eventually developed. “Long time ago,” “Near the lake where drooped the willow,” and “Way down in Raccoon Hollow” were all taken from African-American melodies, according to the authors. The Port Royal Experiment (1861 -), in which newly-freed African American plantation laborers successfully took over the running of Port Royal Island plantations, where they had previously been slaves, reignited interest in these songs. Port Royal's development was overseen by northern abolitionist missionaries, academics, and doctors. By 1867, the “first seven spirituals in this collection” were “frequently sung in church,” according to the authors.

Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who commanded the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the Civil War's first African-American regiment, “recruited, trained, and stationed at Beaufort, South Carolina” from 1862 to 1863, died in 1869. “It was their conduct under guns that humiliated the nation into acknowledging them as men,” Higginson said of the former slaves in his regiment. He socialized with the soldiers and wrote his biography Army Life in a Black Regiment in 1869, which included the lyrics of selected spirituals. Higginson recorded some of the spirituals he heard in camp during the Civil War. “Almost all of their songs had a deeply religious tone to them,…and were written in a minor key, both in text and melody.”

The Fisk Jubilee Singers began touring in 1871, generating increased interest in “spirituals as concert repertory.” The Jubilee Singers began publishing their own songbooks in 1872, including “The Gospel Train.”

What is the meaning of the song Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?

Like most, if not all, African-American spirituals, “Were You There” uses a coded language system in its lyrics. Spirituals' interpretations are frequently based on metaphors, particularly those involving Old Testament figures and Jesus. The film “Were You There” portrays the tale of Jesus' crucifixion. However, beneath this story is a metaphor that compares Jesus' suffering to that of slaves.

“Were you there when they nailed Him to the Tree?” the vocalist asks in various renditions of the song. The connection between Jesus' suffering and the suffering of slaves is further strengthened by replacing Jesus' cross with a tree. During the antebellum period and well into the Jim Crow era, African-Americans would have made a parallel between Jesus being nailed to a tree and the terrifying incidence of lynchings in their own lives.

The first-person, present-tense perspective of “Were You There” emphasizes this declaration of comparing one's experience to Jesus'; the vocalist physically witnesses the crucifixion. In the spiritual, the use of first person pronouns indicates African-American slaves' sense of “collective selfhood” in the face of oppression. It should also be noted that the use of the first person perspective in this hymn represents the Christian belief that all of mankind, past, present, and future, bears responsibility for their role in the sin that led to Jesus Christ's Crucifixion.

From the angle of lyrical interpretation, the author may have been asking the question literally, meaning that the experience should be remembered as if the listener were physically present.

What are the key characteristics of the Negro spiritual?

Negro spirituals have a number of distinguishing traits that help to identify them. Songs that were often low and sluggish were among these qualities. They were also typically made up of simple melodies that were repeated repeatedly throughout the song. They were emotional, demonstrating not just the emotional turmoil that slaves faced, but also their ability to remain positive in the face of adversity. All musical genres are thought to have originated with the negro spiritual. They were passionate, melancholic, soulful, gay, and became a collection of music that provided an outlet for expressing all feelings. The foundation for subsequent kinds of music, particularly gospel, was built by black spirituals. We began to hear and see the artistic expression of the slaves who came decades before us on television, on the radio, and in slave song books as spirituals shifted from being completely work songs or purely praise songs to being infused into more popular media. These songs' commercialization was something that their creators never realized the rewards of.

What are the 3 types of spirituals?

Spirituals are an oral tradition that arose from the blending of African and Christian cultures on American plantations. Spirituals, which are based on hymns, usually employ call and response and can be divided into three categories: verse only, verse plus refrain, or refrain simply. Spirituals, like Gullah music, feature syncopated rhythms.

Spirituals became popularized in the 1860s and 1890s through the performance of concert arrangements based on the folk heritage described above. Several musical modifications were made during this shift, including the introduction of four-part harmony, the replacement of dialect with Standard English, and the reduction of clapping and dancing. The Fisk Jubilee Singers were the most well-known group to popularize these prepared performance spirituals. The Fisk Jubilee Singers were founded in 1866 to collect cash for Fisk University, a school for freed slaves. Their popularity grew to the point where they were mocked in minstrel shows.

“Wade in the Water,” a traditional spiritual adapted by Dr. Carl Wells, Director of the University of South Carolina Gospel Choir, and recorded during their annual Festival of Spirituals in November 2015, is an example of this. “Wade in the Water was a double entendre, as is the case with many of the spirituals,” writes Dr. Wells of this piece. He goes on to argue that the song's purpose is “rather, it was used by slaves who were located on the plantation as a means of advising an escaped slave to head for the waters since the slave master was coming after him with the hounds,” rather than a portrayal of a baptism.

What is the difference between hymns and spiritual songs?

• Psalms have their origins in Christian and Jewish holy texts, such as the Bible and the Tanakh. Hymns are thought to have originated in Egyptian and Greek cultures. Spiritual songs were created by African-Americans.
• Psalms is a collection of religious verses included in a book known as the Book of Psalms. Hymns are poems or songs written in honour of God. The term “spiritual songs” refers to music that are both spontaneous and inspirational.
• Instrumental music is referred to as ‘Psalms.' The term ‘Hymns' refers to a praise song. A sort of sacred song is referred to as “spiritual songs.”
• Royal Psalms, communal laments, individual laments, and other types of Psalms exist. Haiku, free poetry, sonnets, and acrostic poems are examples of hymns. Sing songs, blues, gospel songs, labour songs, and plantation songs are examples of spiritual songs.
• The praise of God is a recurring theme throughout Psalms. Hymns are known for being emotional, poetic, literary, and spiritual in nature. Spiritual songs have religious and social content, as well as varying styles.

What is the hidden message in Wade in the Water?

Harriet Tubman, for example, sang “Wade in the Water” to warn runaway slaves to get off the trail and into the water so that slavecatchers' dogs couldn't track them down. Dogs could not follow a scent trail left by people walking through water.