There are some musical traditions that seem to carry within them something larger than music itself. The African American spiritual is one of them. Born out of the experience of enslaved Africans and their descendants in America, the spiritual is among the most profound and enduring contributions to our nation’s musical heritage. These songs emerged from a people whose freedom had been taken from them, whose lives were marked by extraordinary hardship and injustice, and whose voices nevertheless found a way to sing. The spirituals remind us that the human spirit is capable of remarkable things. It can endure. It can hope. It can lament. It can rejoice. It can resist. And sometimes, when words alone are not enough, it can sing.
It is important to understand that spirituals did not emerge from some abstract musical tradition. They were created by African Americans living under the brutal reality of slavery. They drew upon Christian hymns and biblical stories, but they also incorporated musical and cultural traditions brought from Africa, including call and response, rhythmic vitality, improvisation, and a deeply communal approach to singing. Much of this music was transmitted orally, from one generation to another.
The biblical stories that appear so frequently in spirituals were not simply stories from a distant past. They spoke directly to the lives of the people who sang them. When someone sang Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, the story of walls coming down could carry a powerful resonance for a person living behind the walls of oppression. When someone sang Deep River, the image of crossing over Jordan could speak simultaneously of faith, deliverance, and longing for freedom. When someone sang Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, the words gave voice to an anguish that could be intensely personal. And when someone sang Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, the longing for release could be heard on many levels at once – spiritual, emotional, and perhaps even earthly.
Perhaps what moves me most about this music is its extraordinary emotional range. The spiritual can be mournful without being hopeless. It can be joyful without ignoring suffering. It can be exuberant and deeply contemplative within the space of a single song. Consider Every Time I Feel the Spirit. There is something almost paradoxical about that title. It does not say “every time I understand the spirit” or “every time I can explain the spirit.” It says “every time I feel the spirit.” That distinction seems important. The spiritual is not primarily an intellectual experience. It is embodied. It is something felt – in the voice, in the rhythm, in the breath, in the gathering of people who sing together. The music can begin quietly and grow into something almost overwhelming. A single voice can become many voices, and many voices can sound like one. That is the power of This Little Light of Mine. A light may be small. A single voice may be small. A single person may feel powerless in the face of enormous circumstances. But when that light is shared, and when those voices join together, something changes. The spiritual says, in effect: “I am still here. I still have a voice. I still have hope. I will sing.”
The journey of the spiritual did not end with emancipation. These songs continued to live in African American churches and communities, and eventually they traveled far beyond them. In the decades following the Civil War, groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers brought spirituals to audiences throughout the United States and abroad. Composers and arrangers subsequently created concert versions of the music, and spirituals became an important part of the American choral tradition. They have influenced generations of composers and performers and helped shape later forms of African American music, including gospel, blues, and other musical traditions.
Yet something remarkable happens when we encounter these songs in the concert hall. We are not simply singing beautiful arrangements of old melodies. We are singing music that has survived. We are singing music that was carried in memory. We are singing music whose original creators were, for the most part, not identified by name. We are singing music that passed from one human voice to another when there was no printed score to preserve it. We are singing music that carried stories, faith, sorrow, determination, and hope across generations. In that sense, every performance of a spiritual is also an act of remembrance.
This is ultimately what Why the Spirit Sings means to me. The phrase is not limited to religious belief, although spirituality is undeniably at the center of the African American spiritual tradition. It speaks more broadly to that mysterious and powerful part of human experience that refuses to be extinguished. The spirit sings in joy. The spirit sings in sorrow. The spirit sings when we remember. The spirit sings when we hope. The spirit sings when we stand together. And perhaps most importantly, the spirit sings when circumstances would give us every reason to remain silent.
That is why these songs continue to speak to us more than a century and a half after many of them were first created. They belong specifically to the African American experience, and we should honor that history rather than separating the music from the people whose lives gave it birth. But they also possess a remarkable capacity to reach beyond their origins and touch something universal in all of us.
Spirituals remind us that the human spirit can be wounded without being destroyed, burdened without being defeated, and tested without surrendering its capacity for hope. When that spirit finds its voice in song, something extraordinary happens.
The spirit sings – and we listen.
Michael O’Neal
