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In Africa, "music was called on to mark and celebrate virtually every event in tribal life, no matter how significant."
Those traditions and values were brought over to the North American continent on the slave ships, and became the foundations for Negro Spirituals song on the plantations. Yes, Africans from many diverse religious backgrounds were impressed with Christianity, albeit they reluctantly got involved with Christianity, the Spirituals Project reports, because they (rightly) viewed it as "hypocritical" when a slaveholder "espoused love and brotherhood." And yet many slaves were "fascinated with the Biblical stories, which seemed to parallel many of their own experiences."
So, they created songs, and though they sometimes had to sing them in secret, they nonetheless carved out a release from the strain of hard work and punishment. Dr. Albert Raboteau, a religious scholar and professor of religion at Princeton University, writes that Negro Spirituals "are one of the major documents of world culture." Raboteau explains (America, 1992) that the spirituals "illustrate and articulate the resilience of the human spirit, the ability of people to turn suffering into an experience that is not merely or solely brutalizing but deeply humanizing." Dr. Raboteau goes on to point out that the performance of the spiritual was "dynamically oriented toward the expression of experience, and the embracing of that experience, not only by the individual singer or soloist, but by the community that the person is singing in the midst of."
In fact, the Negro Spiritual, for many slaves, presented a creative vision of what freedom must be like. "Free at last, free at last, thanks God Almighty, I'm free at last..."
One of the great leaders of blacks in America Frederick Douglass; he was not only an intellectual, scholar, and orator, but he was a great writer and understood politics. He approached subjects from both a human and a scholarly position. He noted in his Fourth of July speech...
They were part of the social life of many slaves; they contained writings from slaves, from freedmen, and from abolitionists. Douglass of course published Douglass' Monthly (1858-1863); also worth mentioning: National Anti-Slavery Standard (1840-1870); the National Era (1847-1860); American Anti-Slavery Reporter (1834); Anti-Slavery Examiner (1836-1845); Anti-Slavery Record (1835-1837); African Observer: A Monthly Journal (1827-1828); and the Radical Abolitionist (1855-1858).
Works Cited
Douglass, Frederick. (1852). What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Retrieved Feb. 6, 2007, at http://douglassarchives.org/doug_a10.htm.
Eisenhower, John S.D. 1989. So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846-1848.
New York: Random House.
Public Broadcasting System. "American Experience: Bataan Rescue / Philippines." Retrieved Feb. 6, 2007, at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bataan/sfeature/sf_philippines.html#ql.
Public Broadcasting System. "New Perspectives on the West: Indian Removal Extract from Andrew Jackson's Seventh Annual Message to Congress" / "Indian Policy Reform Extract
From President Chester Arthur's First Annual Message to Congress." Retrieved Feb. 4, 2007 at http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/seven/indpol.htm.
Stewart, Maria. (1831). Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build. Black History Month. Retrieved Feb. 5, 2007, at http://library.stritch.edu/blackhistorymonth/primary.htm.
The Spirituals Project. (2005). Music Serving Many Functions. Retrieved Feb. 5, 2007, at http://spiritualsproject.org/index.php.
Works Cited
Douglass, Frederick. (1852). What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Retrieved Feb. 6, 2007, at http://douglassarchives.org/doug_a10.htm.
Eisenhower, John S.D. 1989. So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846-1848.
New York: Random House.
Public Broadcasting System. "American Experience: Bataan Rescue / Philippines." Retrieved Feb. 6, 2007, at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bataan/sfeature/sf_philippines.html#ql.
From President Chester Arthur's First Annual Message to Congress." Retrieved Feb. 4, 2007 at http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/seven/indpol.htm.
Stewart, Maria. (1831). Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build. Black History Month. Retrieved Feb. 5, 2007, at http://library.stritch.edu/blackhistorymonth/primary.htm.
The Spirituals Project. (2005). Music Serving Many Functions. Retrieved Feb. 5, 2007, at http://spiritualsproject.org/index.php.
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