The Negro Spiritual is at the heart of African American music and American music at large. Born out of the atrocities of slavery, the spiritual represented a mode of communication, praise, and emotional and spiritual expression for enslaved Africans. The spiritual at its core is a folk song–inherently a group vocal genre with its lyrics equally important to the meaning as the distinct musical elements incorporated in the melodies. Post emancipation, there was a drive to transcribe spirituals so that they would be preserved beyond the experience that generated them. Groups began to perform the melodies both in and out of the concert hall. When Antonín Dvořák arrived in the United States, he declared that spirituals should be the core of the American classical sound. Following this lead, composers such as Harry T. Burleigh and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor set spirituals in more European-inspired forms. Both vocal and instrumental settings of spirituals were made in this movement, but today, instrumental spirituals have not received a place in the canon like vocal settings. During the Harlem Renaissance, a desire to preserve Black culture as something independent of whiteness and integration resulted in arguments between composers, activists, and artists about the “authenticity” of these spiritual settings. At first glance, instrumental spirituals are inherently “inauthentic” and thus go against this movement. Perhaps, it was this factor that resulted in fewer instrumental settings, but the problem goes deeper into the systemic issues within the culture of instrumental music. This can be remedied, however, with a push to study instrumental spirituals through an understanding of proper performance practice, and a renewed emphasis on the pedagogical value of instrumental spirituals.
After reviewing the literature and discourse around spirituals since their inception and analyzing selected vocal settings, I will discuss the history and elements of Negro Spirituals, evaluate the concept of “authenticity,” address factors hindering the preservation of instrumental settings, develop an instrumental performance practice for them, and highlight the pedagogical benefits of incorporating them into instrumental study.