Diarists and travelers through the nineteenth century south frequently noted the peculiar power and beauty of the songs of slaves. Observers sometimes found it difficult to explain the sounds they heard, but many described being moved in extraordinary, and even distressing, ways. George Hepworth, a New England minister visiting Carrollton, Louisiana during the Civil War, wrote of encountering “a large number of refugee blacks, not yet freedmen” who were gathered in the area, “living on three-quarter Government rations and working in every way in which they could.” Hepworth describes entering a simple church the former slaves had built on their new compound and finding therein about a hundred people, in perfect silence:

“At length, however, a single voice, coming from a dark corner of the room, began a low, mournful chant, in which the whole assemblage joined by degrees. It was a strange song, with seemingly very little rhythm, and was what is termed in music a minor; it was not a psalm, nor a real song, as we understand these words; for there was nothing that approached the jubilant in it. It seemed more like a wail, a mournful, dirge-like expression of sorrow. At first, I was inclined to laugh, it was far from what I had been accustomed to call music; then I felt uncomfortable, as though I could not endure it, and half rose to leave the room; and at last, as the weird chorus rose a little above, and then fell a little below, the keynote, I was overcome by the real sadness and depression of soul which it seemed to symbolize…. They sang for a full half-hour. –an old man knelt down to pray. His voice was at first low and indistinct… He seemed to gain impulse as he went on, and pretty soon burst out with an O good, dear Lord! we pray for de cullered people. Thou knows well ‘nuff what we’se been through: do, do, oh! do gib us free! when the whole audience swayed back and forward in their seats, and uttered in perfect harmony a sound like that caused by prolonging the letter m with the lips closed. One or two began this wild, mournful chorus; and in an instant all joined in, and the sound swelled upwards and downwards like waves of the sea.”⁹

The spirituals are a transforming and transformational music. A principal aim of the songs, when sung in ceremonial context, has been to invoke the presence of spirit. Like Hepworth, other nineteenth and early twentieth century observers remarked at palpable changes in the energy of the meetings and churches where spirituals were being sung. They commented that Black singers manipulated timbres in ways unexpected and unfamiliar to ears trained to European music scales. Nonetheless, these “strange” resonances often had signal effects on the spirit of the place and on the listener him or herself. In a Florida guidebook published in 1876, author Sidney Lanier writes:

“I have seen a whole congregation of negroes at night…swaying to and fro with the ecstasy and glory of [their song], abandon as by one consent the semitone that should come according to the civilized modus, and sing in its place a big lusty whole tone that would shake any man’s soul.”¹⁰

This is one of the most marked ways in which the African American spirituals tradition resembles other religious expressions of the Afro-Atlantic diaspora. In Santeria, Vodou, Candomblé and many other Black traditions of the Caribbean and Latin America, a central objective of collective worship is to create the space for the sacred to enter and engage with the people present. The spirit is not simply to be considered and acknowledged, but to be felt, experienced and relished. The combination of chanted or sung prayer, ritual music and dance is intended to transform the space and the individuals present so that they are open to another quality of experience. So too, the spirituals, especially when accompanied by rhythmic movement and the ring shout, were designed to manifestly change the nature of the space. To sacralize it. To sacralize the singers and the listeners. To make available to all present an alternative experience of being in the world.

It is important to understand that this transformational meaning and purpose of the spirituals was widespread in the first century of the creation of this music. A further example among many was recorded by Clifton Furness in 1926 who attended a prayer meeting held in one of the old slave cabins on a South Carolina plantation. Furness related that the service started with the preacher slowly reading a selection of scripture, gradually increasing his tempo and vigor, until, after a while a steady moaning rose up in the shadowy corners where the women sat. Some of the women, their babies wrapped in bundles, patted and rocked in time to the flow of the preacher’s rhythm and several men tapped their feet “in strange syncopation.” Furness reported that a vigorous cadence developed in the room, a rhythmic presence that affected all who were there, including himself. “It seemed to take shape almost visibly, and grow,” he wrote. “I was gripped with the feeling of a mass-intelligence, a self-conscious entity, gradually informing the crowd and taking possession of every mind there, including my own.” As the intensity grew, a man sitting directly in front of Furness, his head bowed, body swaying and feet moving up and down, suddenly shouted aloud: Git right – sodger! Git right – sodger! Git right – wit Gawd!

“Instantly the crowd took it up… A distinct melodic outline became more and more prominent, shaping itself around the central theme of the words, Git right, sodger! Scraps of other words and tunes were flung into the melody of sound by individual singers from time to time, but the general trend was carried on by a deep undercurrent, which appeared to be stronger than the mind of any individual present, for it bore the mass of improvised harmony and rhythms into the most effective climax of incremental repetition that I have ever heard. I felt as if some conscious plan or purpose were carrying us along, call it mob-mind, communal composition, or what you will.”¹¹

Visitors to African American ritual ceremonies often initially felt a certain physical/psychic discomfort at the nature of the energy present, especially as it grew discernibly in strength. Some then also reported feeling a powerful connection to that energy as it touched everyone present in profound ways. Many who attend ceremonies of contemporary Candomblé, Santeria and Vodou report a similar combination of responses. The percussive rhythms can be so affecting that observers feel an unexplained desire to leave or to cry, as if the sounds were influencing them at vibrational levels and frequencies of which they had not previously been aware.¹²

IV. Otanes: The motherlode: Cuban Santeria