|
``He
taught me a lot about the Negro spirituals,'' said Ridout,
who often would accompany his father on visits to elderly
church members and ask them to sing for him.
``Some
of them stuck with me,'' said Ridout, recalling a 104-year-old
woman's rendition of ``Talk About a Child Who Do Love
Jesus.''
``There's
so much depth in the Negro spiritual; I began to feel
it as I got older,'' Ridout said. ``It's in my blood
and my bones.''
W.E.B.
Du Bois called spirituals ``the articulate message of
the slave to the world.''
``They
were singing in those days because they really had that
beautiful picture of where heaven was, but they were
here, being taken advantage of by the slave masters,''
said Walter Moss of Philadelphia, former vice president
of the National Association of Negro Musicians.
Jones,
a classically trained singer, knew little about spirituals
until he was invited to give a concert at the Museum
of Natural History in Denver in 1991. He responded by
suggesting a program on the hidden meanings in Negro
spirituals _ which sometimes included coded messages
about the Underground Railroad.
``I
had no idea at the time why I volunteered to do that,''
said Jones, who had sung spirituals occasionally but
had no great interest in them. ``I was panicked.''
He
prepared by reading books, listening to recordings he
borrowed from the library and talking to relatives in
North Carolina.
``When
I did the program, I was just totally taken over emotionally
by the experience,'' said Jones, who subsequently wrote
a book entitled ``Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the
Spirituals'' and has devoted a large part of his life
to spreading the message.
He
plans to give a lecture on spirituals May 1 at Johnson
& Wales University in Denver, with a concert to
follow by his organization's choir.
Negro
spirituals link the suffering and hope of salvation
of the slaves with the suffering and salvation of the
Gospel _ universal elements that transcend race and
culture, Ridout and others say.
Many
credit the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who toured the United
States and Europe in the late 19th century, with helping
bring the Negro spiritual to a broader audience. Ridout
recalls being serenaded by a group of Italian youngsters
with an English-language version of ``Swing Low, Sweet
Chariot'' while he was serving in the military in Europe
in 1945.
Over
the years, the spiritual, which experienced a reawakening
during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, has become
more entwined with gospel music, a more formal style
that arose in the urban North in the late 19th century
and is characterized by arrangements and instrumentation.
Originally accompanied only by hand-clapping and foot-stomping,
spirituals now often are composed and arranged, and
sung in a concert environment.
``There
are those who are concerned about the watering down
of spirituals by setting them into a European, classical
format,'' said Randye Jones, a singer from Temple Hills,
Maryland, who created a lecture and recital series called
``The Gospel Truth about the Negro Spiritual.''
Similarly,
a debate continues over the use of dialect, or traditional
phrasing, in which words like heaven and children become
``heb'n'' and ``chillun.''
``That
brings authenticity to it, but it makes some people
uncomfortable. One finds what he wants to in any music,''
said Mable Morrison, a professor at Delaware State University.
Randye
Jones said the style in which a spiritual is sung is
less important than the respect a performer gives it.
``I've
talked to people who say they are uncomfortable singing
spirituals because they aren't black,'' said Jones,
who recalls being brought to tears hearing a spiritual
sung by a white man who ``couldn't be more whiter if
he tried.''
Art
Jones has found that whites often are more receptive
to his organization's interracial choir than blacks.
``We've
had to work harder for the black audience than the white
audience,'' he said. ``That's a really strange irony.''
Jones
and others say the reluctance by some blacks to embrace
spirituals may be attributable to the painful thoughts
they can conjure.
Blacks
don't like to remember slavery, and there's a danger
of appreciating spirituals simply for their entertainment
value, said James Cone, who teaches black theology at
Union Theological Seminary in New York.
``I
don't think the spirituals can be understood properly
unless there is a powerful empathy with what it's like
to be a slave,'' he said. ``You have to have the capacity
to identify in order to understand.''
At
the same time, Cone and others believe spirituals can
serve as a modern source of inspiration.
``If
our ancestors could get through two and a half centuries
of chattel slavery, present-day black people ought to
be able to cope with whatever they're going through
in the inner city,'' said Cone, author of ``The Spirituals
and the Blues: An Interpretation,'' a book that links
both musical styles as coping mechanisms for black Americans.
Sam
Edwards, president and co-founder of the San Francisco-based
Friends of Negro Spirituals, sees membership in his
group growing each year, but he says reaching out to
young people is critical.
Some
already are heeding the call.
Caneisha
Fosters, a senior studying classical voice at Dillard
High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, recently won
$300 (euro230) and a $3,000 (euro2,310) college scholarship
in the Negro Spiritual Scholarship Foundation competition
in Orlando for her renditions of ``Deep River'' and
``Down by the River.''
``Singing
the spiritual is kind of a winding down for me,'' she
said. ``It helps me be me.''
___
On
the Net:
The
Spirituals Project:
http://spiritualsproject.org
National
Association of Negro Musicians:
http://www.nanm.org
Friends
of Negro Spirituals:
http://www.dogonvillage.com/negrospirituals
|
Email
This Article To A Friend
