African American Work Songs and Spirituals
The enslavement of Africans in the United States was a brutal and dehumanizing experience that stripped the enslaved of their identity. Wherever the enslaved landed in the New World, they adapted and changed their belief systems to local circumstances and influences. The cultures they were from and the conditions they were forced into contributed to the sounds of African American music. African American songs were an integral component of the slave-owning American societies as elements of repression of the slave-owners and the authorities, as well as strategies of resistance and negotiation between the enslaved. The “sound of slavery” was constant in slave quarters, workplaces, cities, and farms, in meeting places and parties in the United States.
Early slave songs known as spirituals were adaptations of the hymns that new slaves were taught during Sunday worship. One of the most interesting contradictions of slavery was that despite the cruelty of this dehumanizing practice, there was still an insistence that slaves worshiped “God” and become Christian. On most plantations in the American South, Sundays were considered a day of rest and slaves were allowed time to study scripture, learn about the Lord, and practice worship. This meant that Africans were allowed to play music, sing songs, and commune. This lead to the generative aspect of African American music caused by the syncretism of cultures which led to this new style of music.
In Congo Square in New Orleans and many others, slaves made use of this time to play the drums. The rhythms and songs they learned and taught each other would go on to lay the foundations for so much of modern gospel music. As well as, spread across New Orleans and the rest of the South to influence delta blues, jazz, and swing.
Work songs played a vital part in the lives of enslaved African Americans and continue to influence African American musical traditions today. Although the middle passage stripped slaves of their identity and culture, these African musical traditions helped them to maintain their cultural identity and memory in America. This new music was the foundation for the creation of a new African American cultural tradition. The songs provided insight into the daily realities of slave life, with melodies, rhythms, and lyrics reflecting their lack of food, the master’s whip, death, and the exhausting field work. Many songs contained double and hidden meanings, which offered a means of cultural resistance to the institution of slavery.
We can see examples of work songs in Beloved. In Beloved Paul D who was previously on a prison farm where he did hard manual labor sings this song on page 48 of Beloved,
“Lay my head on the railroad line,
Train come along, pacify my mind.
If I had my weight in lime,
I’d whip my captain till he went stone blind. Five-cent nickel.
Ten-cent dime,
Busting rocks is busting time.”
This work song, like others previously mentioned, was created to get through the pain, emotional distress, and the pounding of the manual labor. Slave work groups used call-and-response work songs to regulate the pace of their work. As we can see through the “pounding and pounding and pounding” Sethe describes on page 48 of Beloved. These songs also became opportunities for slaves to talk about their masters, their overseers, and their condition. Of course, slaves had to be careful about expressing their own opinions so they often “coded” their improvised lyrics.
These coded lyrics were a large part of are these songs, and ties into the culture of dissemblance, a culture of hiding one’s true feelings and thoughts, which ties into both Beyoncé’s Lemonade, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. In Lemonade the culture of dissemblance is represented through black women, deflecting physical and emotional violence, and cultivating rich lives that play out behind the scenes of modern society. Whereas in Beloved, this is seen through both Paul D and Sethe’s inability to discuss their past and let go of their pain.
The song below, “Sweet Chariot, Sweet Chariot”, a song of the underground railroad, represents this coded language.
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home,
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home.
I looked over Jordan and what did I see
Coming for to carry me home,
A band of angels coming after me,
Coming for to carry me home.
If you get there before I do,
Coming for to carry me home,
Tell all my friends that I’m coming, too,
Coming for to carry me home.
Upon hearing this song, an enslaved person would know that they had to get prepared to escape, a band of angels (people helping to rescue them) is coming to take them their freedom. The Underground Railroad (sweet chariot) is coming south (swing low) to take the slave to the north to freedom (carry me home). This song excellently utilizes coded language in order to hide the true meaning of this song of freedom.
Beyoncé’s song “Forward” is reminiscent of a spiritual as it is a call to keep moving forward in the face of hardship.
Forward
Best foot forward just in case
When we made our way to now
It’s time to listen
It’s time to fight
Forward
It has a call and response aspect, as well as a repetitive nature making it similar to a work song. In her visual album Lemonade, Beyonce has women holding pictures of the men in their lives who were taken by the oppression of racism, as a call to remember and take action against oppression and police brutality.
African American Spiritual and work songs were extremely generative as the enslaved essentially created their own language through song to communicate and work around their owners, without getting caught. Music was a solace, a community-builder, and voice for hope during enslavement and afterward, in the days of Reconstruction and then Jim Crow. Currently, as African American music has evolved, it has been an expression of culture and has transformed into the popular gospel, soul, rap, ragtime, jazz, blues, R&B, rock that gives us icons like Beyoncé and others who make us more aware of our brutal past and bring us together.
Playlist:
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Deep River
Sometimes I feel Like a Motherless Child
Wade in the Water
Hold on, Just a Little While Longer
Rockey My Soul
Ol’ Man Satan
Lightning- Long John
