MANSFIELD — The University Chorus of Ohio State Mansfield took its audience for a history lesson on Negro Spirituals Thursday afternoon.
The event, at Conard Performance Hall in Riedl Hall at the Mansfield campus, coincided with Black History Month.
“We have done so many spirituals for our February concerts,” said David Tovey, director of the University Chorus. “And I always try to come up with a new wrinkle for presenting them. They are still my favorite type of choral music.”
Tovey discussed the recent change from calling the genre ‘African-American Spirituals’ to ‘Negro Spirituals’ suggesting in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the term Negro was used to make African-Americans feel less empowered.
“It was a period where black spirituals made them think back to when they were less empowered and a period that they didn’t want to think much about.” Tovey said.
He recalled a discussion he had with a colleague who said, perhaps “attitudes had changed.” The wrinkle Tovey chose to enlighten the audience with was an hour-long history of spiritual music.
“Around the world, the Negro Spiritual is pretty well established, and it is particularly established as an American genre, but every musical genre has ancestors,” Tovey said.
Much of the ancestry comes from Europe and West Africa, where much of the slave trade began.
After the singing of Bonse Aba, a Zambian praise song, Tovey discussed how spirituals were work songs and worship songs. He told the audience spirituals began as a way of teaching slaves about Protestant Christianity by members of the original American colonies. It was the Protestant sect of Christianity that led to the style of the spiritual, he said.
“When you get to Central and Latin America and the Caribbean, most often, it was Catholic Christianity to which they were introduced,” Tovey said. “The missionaries went about their work (of spreading their religion) very differently. Most of the slave owners went about making sure their slaves were introduced to Christianity, even though they were treating slaves unfairly.
“The main thing was to get people baptized. In the protestant tradition, missionaries wanted slaves to be acquainted with the bible. And as you might imagine, there were parts of the bible that appealed much more to the slave population than others.”
Because the slaves were taken from West Africa, where Tovey said the religions included supernatural powers, slaves enjoyed hearing passages about God saving people using locusts or frogs. He said there were parts of the Bible’s teachings that slaves connected with, including stories of the Hebrews who were enslaved in Africa.
Moses was a hero to the slaves because of his ability to lead his people away from the Pharaoh who had them enslaved, he said.
“You certainly find spirituals about the Old Testament — songs about Elijah, Daniel in the lion’s den, Sampson and Moses, the action figures.” Tovey said. “You also find a lot dealing with the actions of Jesus.”
After the Civil War, spirituals were spread around the nation as southern black-colleges made money by performing in front northern abolitionists. For the first time, spirituals were written down and arranged for soprano, alto, tenor and bass.
Tovey said this movement sparked controversy as some immediately took to the idea the songs were no long spirituals because they lost the improvised feeling that made spirituals so distinct. Others, he said, felt this was just a new sub-genre of the spiritual.
Tovey said there were hidden transcripts in some spirituals. If slaves were planning on running away to the north via the Underground Railroad, they would sing about “following the drinking goard. “Stealing awake Jesus” would mean they were not planning on staying around the plantation where slaves were forced to work.
“They could sing it very loudly and no one be the wiser,” he said.
Alice Williams, a member of the audience said she enjoyed the choir’s performance because it reminded her of history lessons she had learned at her college in Mississippi.
“I went to a historically black college (Alcorn State University) and we studied spiritual music like this, I loved it,” she said. “If you know the history of (the spiritual) then you can appreciate the slaves and the things they had to go through, and how intelligent they were in order escape.
“They used music to build their spirituality; to escape, to get food, it was fantastic. It lets you know that slaves were individual and they never gave up to have their freedom.”
