ABSTRACT

Spirituals, ragtime, blues, and jazz are the formidable creations of Black people who were brutally oppressed, yet who gave beauty in response to enslavement and enriched the musical heritage of people throughout the world. The spiritual derived from African origins and infl uenced the form, expressiveness, as well as the textual and musical content of the blues, and, subsequently, jazz. The same mournful expression found in “Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone . . . a long ways from home . . .” is felt in the lines of Ma Rainey’s, “If I could break these chains and let my worried heart go free/but it’s too late now, the blues has made a fool of me.” 1

This ability to capture the deepest personal emotions and frame them in a simple text loaded with metaphors and other fi gures of speech was the hallmark of African griots, praise singers, priests, and dirge singers. The spirituals and the blues extended the tradition while incorporating past practices of double entendres, proverbs, and allegories. Historically, the fi eld hollers, work songs, and spirituals were formulated and reformulated according to emotional, spiritual, and physical needs of the slaves. The double entendre of corn-shucking party songs, spirituals, and work songs encapsulated sophisticated meanings in seemingly primitive lyrics and simplistic melodies. Yet, a closer examination of the lyrics, rhythms, and melodies of the slaves’ songs reveals an insight and spiritual substance that was usually misunderstood by outsiders. The body of poetic literature that emerged from the horrors of slavery documents the creativity and intelligence of a so-called illiterate people.