Although it is impossible to determine with certainty when the first spirituals were created, most scholars speculate that these songs proliferated near the end of the eighteenth century and during the last few decades leading up to the end of legalized slavery in the 1860's. During this long period of active music making, Americans fought and won a war for "independence" and "liberty," while its rapidly expanding Black population remained enslaved, an irony that came to be reflected in the songs they created. Despite important differences in the content and form of the music they created, all of the African communities from which slaves were captured placed functional music - in some form - at the center of their daily existence.In Africa, music was called on to mark and celebrate virtually every event in tribal life, no matter how insignificant. Daily routines of work, commerce or social discourse, as well as major life events, such as birth, marriage or participation in war, were all framed and punctuated with singing, dancing, drumming, or other forms of active music making.