White Spirituals Research Articles

Briefly Noted

Reviewed by: Briefly Noted Leslie Andersen The Plow That Broke the Plains and The River. DVD. Written and directed by Pare Lorentz. Music by Virgil Thomson. [United States]: Naxos, 2007. 2.110521. $19.99. Strings Attached: Sarod & Cello. DVD. Performed by Amaan Ali Khan, Matthew Barley, Ayaan Ali Khan and others. [England]: Navras, 2006, 2002. NRDVD 513-N. $19.98. Arguably two of the most important documentary films of the twentieth century, The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937), have been beautifully restored on this DVD. The scores by Virgil Thomson, whose original soundtracks were damaged beyond repair, have been nicely realized by the Post-Classical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez. Expert narration is provided by Floyd King. These first film scores by Thomson (he was to compose some six others including Louisiana Story, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948), are considered by many to be among his finest work. His utilization in the scores of musical Americana, including hymn tunes, cowboy songs, and "white spirituals" (traditional folk tunes from the British Isles) anticipates the work of Aaron Copland. In fact, it can be argued that Copland's landmark score for a similar documentary, The City (1939), would never have existed but for Thomson's work in these films. The DVD includes several extras including interviews with documentary filmmaker, George Stoney about both films; composer, friend, and colleague of Thomson's Charles Fussell, interviewed by artistic director Joseph Horowitz; and a rare audio interview of Thomson himself. Although the music itself seems to have been recorded a bit too low, the performance by the Post-Classical Ensemble is first-rate and the entire DVD presentation is a boon for both the documentary film repertoire and devotees of the music of Virgil Thomson. The sarod, perhaps one of the most important instruments in Hindustani music, is performed here by two talented brothers in a long line of maestros of the instrument. Accompanying them in the East/West collaboration is cellist Matthew Barley. The three, accompanied by several others, perform two ragas at a live performance at the Royal Festival Hall in 2002. The collaboration between these musicians has evolved over several years as all concerned have been interested in the juxtaposition of these instruments and the cultures they represent. It is obvious that both the sarod and the cello blend well together. Most impressive is the ability of Barley to match the intricate scales and lines of the ragas on the cello. This is most evident in the Gat movements of the Raga Kirwani (one of the most popular ragas in North India today), where the unison playing is executed so well as to not be able to tell the difference between the instruments. Excellent program notes are provided by Neil Sorrell explaining the form of the raga and how each movement is executed. An added feature on the DVD is a sample of the brother's electronica album where their vocal skills are highlighted. One can tell from this slickly produced music video that they are most likely popular music icons as well as outstanding classical musicians. Copyright © 2008 the Music Library Association, Inc.

‘Redneck religion and shitkickin' saviours?’: Gram Parsons, theology and country music

The country singer Gram Parsons (1946-73) has in the last decade been increasingly cited as a seminal influence upon the development of contemporary alt.country and the roots/americana revivial. This article critiques Parsons and his music within the realm of contextual theology, using him as a bridge to examine the wider issue of what a theology of country music might entail. Both Parsons and Country Music in general are strongly religious in language, ethos and culture, yet the theology articulated both explicitly and implicitly is not evangelical as those outside the genre and culture might assume. Rather, the theology of country music involves a gospel of liminality, a theology of redemptive transgression that is expressed in ‘white spirituals’ where the song is a locus of grace. The article asks if Parsons was a locus of grace; are his songs those of liminal presence; does country music employ a theology of redemptive transgression?

The Black in Jackson's White Spirituals

The Black in Jackson's White Spirituals

Judge Jackson: Black Giant of White Spirituals

WITHOUT A DOUBT the most creative and talented Negro musician to express the depths of his soul by composing songs in four-shape notation was Judge Jackson, self-educated Alabama farmer who compiled The Colored Sacred Harp, a ninetyeight-page work containing seventy-seven songs. Published in 1934, this comparatively thin, traditionally oblong-shaped, blue paperback collection still stands as not only what is probably the sole volume of white spirituals gathered by a black man, but also what appears to be the only completely new collection of fourshape compositions since John G. McCurry published the Social Harp in 1855.1 Throughout his long lifetime of musical and farming efforts, Jackson displayed an energy, aggressiveness, and determination that should, by any standards, be described as extraordinary, but that were singularly remarkable for a black man in that era and region. Yet, other than in the out-of-print Colored Sacred Harp itself, one is likely to find his name only in a couple of obscure references. While progressing from field hand to farm owner and businessman in Dale County, Alabama, Judge Jackson also augmented his musical talents from curious fa-sol-la2 student to authorized teacher of Sacred Harp notation. Speculation concerning his initial awareness of a yearning for original self-expression is aided by dates assigned to various compositions in The Colored Sacred Harp. For instance, eighteen of Jackson's songs bear specific dates-the earliest, Alone, carries the date December 24, 1904. This places his first known creative effort during his twenty-first year, just five years after hearing his first four-note solmization. Only one other composition, My Mother's Gone, bears such an early date, and with it an accompanying notation: Words arranged by J. Jackson, Ozark, Ala., Dec. 26, 1904. Set to music August 26, 1927.-

Hear These Beautiful Sacred Selections

Few pioneering works on American culture are as significant as George Pullen Jackson's White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and “Buckwheat Notes” (1933). To this seminal book Jackson added four others, which fixed his name as the key interpreter of the Anglo-American religious folksong tradition within the United States. In White Spirituals Jackson set for himself a large and ambitious goal: to define and study a corpus not previously recognized as folksong by orthodox ballad scholars. In the process, he added to our understanding of the tune-family concept and helped to establish a multi-faceted model of folk society identified by geography, institutional structure, and philosophic belief.

The Sacred Harp in Mississippi

IN 1933 WHEN George Pullen Jackson published his excellent book White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands, he did not know that Sacred Harp singers in Mississippi were numerous and that in the eastern half of that state the Harp had almost as strong following as could be found anywhere in the South. Because he had heard little of the annual conventions or of other interest in the white spirituals in Mississippi, he believed that Sacred Harp singing there was all but nonexistent. By contrast, Alabama, where the fa-so-la singing tradition was strong, then had and still has well advertised regional singing conventions and state conventions. In his book Jackson allows Mississippi only two thirds of page, compared with four and half on Georgia, six on Alabama, one and half on Texas (also eight on convention in Mineral Wells), and one on Arkansas, where the Sacred Harp has never had much following and is nearly unknown today. In Mississippi, says Jackson, there is no state organization and the rarity of singers from that state attending the big conventions in other states as delegates indicates the low estate of Sacred Harp singing in that commonwealth. He had been told, however, that a foothold existed in the northeastern corner (Prentiss and Tishomingo Counties), where the singings were said to be frequent and local convention was active.'

White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and "Buckwheat Notes"

White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and "Buckwheat Notes"

On Flogging a Dead Horse: Lessons Learned from the Africanisms Controversy

The perhaps inelegant title of this paper reflects my initial feeling of distaste when it was suggested that I read another paper indicating the importance of the African cultural background for certain present-day characteristics of the music and the folklore of the American Negro. By now, no one conversant with the literature and the subject matter doubts that the position assumed by Sir Harry Johnson and championed by Melville Herskovits is essentially right. This was, briefly, the position that West African slaves brought with them to the New World a distinctive style of music and a musical value system that continued to develop (while absorbing new elements) in the foreign surroundings. My own contributions to the controversy consisted in pointing out that since there was little reason, in terms of pressure from the rest of American culture, to change many diagnostic elements of the West African musical style, it changed only through the incorporation of new musical elements that could be reinterpreted to fit it, and further, in indicating the kinds of musical norms from West Africa that have persisted in the New World, in somewhat specific terms. This of course, refers to the slave period. Later on, the controversy was mainly about the Spirituals and Gospel Hymns. Even in early postbellum times claims frequently were made to the effect that the Negroes of the United States had contributed these beautiful melodies and harmonies to the world. This seems almost to have been taken for granted, and not only by the Freedmen's Bureau, since some talent in singing and dancing among American Negroes had been recognized consistently by slaveholders and other opponents of abolition. Then, early in the twentieth century, Wallaschek's volume Primitive Music (1893) appeared, with the allegation that all the beautiful Negro songs were in reality simply copies, and somewhat inept copies, of European tunes. Shortly thereafter, Henry Krehbiel (1914) reasserted the autonomy of American Negro songs. However, fourteen years later, Newman Ivy White (1928) once again brought forth the claim that American Negro songs were copies of white tunes, and George Pullen Jackson, in his White Spirituals of the Southern Uplands (1933) devoted two chapters to disposing of any claims American Negroes might have to originality, either in words or in music, in their Spirituals. If the controversy has indeed ended, as I have mentioned, with an appreciation of the importance of the contribution of West African musical patterns to those musics that are identified mainly with the Negro of the United States, the question, What went wrong, might legitimately be asked. The answer is a complex one. First, it might be noted that in most of the squabbling about Negro capacity for musical creativeness, the alternatives seem to have been posed as follows: Either the Negro slaves and their descendants copied the songs that were all around them, or (perhaps by virtue of a truly remarkable racial musical talent) they invented them out of nothing in order to express the emotions proper to slaves and depressed peoples. According to this

Quartal Harmony in the Pentatonic Folk Hymns of the Sacred Harps

OR over twenty years now, the books of the late George Pullen Jackson have drawn attention to the wealth of significant and sometimes beautiful material in the Old Harp hymnals. Many of these tunes show the influence of secular balladry, and a large percentage of the hymns were written by rural musicians with no more musical training than that received in the singing schools. For these reasons, Jackson believed the music of the Sacred Harps to be true folk music and coined the term white spiritual to apply to a hymn of this type. The present article is concerned with a consideration of these hymns as true composed music, albeit composed music on a somewhat primitive level. At first thought the distinction would seem to be a somewhat academic one, since the folksong background of the tunes and the lack of formal training on the part of the composers is admitted. Nevertheless, Jackson's interest lay only in the melodies of the hymns, which he traced and classified. A folksong melody, or a melody showing folksong characteristics, however, does not mean that the composition using it automatically becomes folk music. We do not, for example, consider the Brahms Hungarian Dances as such. In both cases other elements need to be taken into consideration. Few scholars have bothered to examine the harmonic element in the music of the Old Harps. Charles Seeger has called attention to a similarity in the contrapuntal practices in some of the three-part shape note hymns and European music of the medieval period.' This is a field yet to be explored in detail. The present writer is interested in the evidences of a still earlier type of harmony, a type of harmony whose European occurence is a matter of inference since it would have been in use before a reliable method of notation was formulated. A year before Jackson's first book, the famous White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands, Joseph Yasser published A Theory of Evolving Tonality. This is a long and scholarly work, and it is only the first section (which deals with infra-diatonic harmony) that is pertinent to this discussion. Suffice it to say that two big conclusions were drawn: first, that all music at a certain stage of development tends to be based on the pentatonic scale; and second, that the instinctive and accoustically correct harmony for this scale is quartal rather than tertian. Yasser supports these theories with examples of Chinese music. Six years later he attempted to show that the Gregorian chant was originally pentatonic in character and that his theories of infra-diatonic harmony could be applied to it as well.3 Now it happens that a large number of the shape note hymns are also pentatonic, and it seems obvious that they would be fine material to prove or disprove the Yasser theories. Hence the present study was undertaken.

Another Sheaf of White Spirituals

Another Sheaf of White Spirituals

Another Sheaf of White Spirituals

Another Sheaf of White Spirituals

Another Sheaf of White Spirituals by George Pullen Jackson. University of Florida (Convention Press, Jacksonville, Florida), 1952. xviii + 233 pp. $6.50.

Another Sheaf of White Spirituals by George Pullen Jackson. University of Florida (Convention Press, Jacksonville, Florida), 1952. xviii + 233 pp. $6.50.

Another Sheaf of White Spirituals.

Another Sheaf of White Spirituals.

Another Sheaf of White Spirituals

Another Sheaf of White Spirituals

White and Negro Spirituals: Their Life Span and Kinship

White and Negro Spirituals: Their Life Span and Kinship

White and Negro Spirituals. Their Life Span and Kinship, Tracing 200 Years of Untrammeled Song Making and Singing among Our Country Folk

White and Negro Spirituals. Their Life Span and Kinship, Tracing 200 Years of Untrammeled Song Making and Singing among Our Country Folk

White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and "Buckwheat Notes"

White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and "Buckwheat Notes"

White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands.George Pullen Jackson

White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands.George Pullen Jackson

George Pullen Jackson, White Spirituals in Southern Uplands

George Pullen Jackson, <i>White Spirituals in Southern Uplands</i>