Sacred and Secular in African American Music Study Guide

The Socio-Historical and Cosmological Origins of African American Music

• Conceptual Foundation: African American music acts as a source of survival, well-being, motivation, and entertainment. It serves as a medium for signifying humanity amidst horrific oppression while engaging in creativity, worship, and rituals.
• African Traditional Unity: Rooted in African traditions, there is no clear-cut separation between the sacred and the secular; they are viewed as one entity. Consequently, some African American musical genres are inherently fluid, engaging a tension between institutional labels and practical use.
• Cosmological Roots: Enslaved Africans transported to the Western Hemisphere as chattel brought with them sophisticated worldviews, historical encounters, and a cultural legacy despite being viewed by captors as "unintelligent brutes."
• The First African Diaspora: This term refers to people of African descent living elsewhere due to antebellum slavery, sanctioned by Pope Nicholas V's $1452/4$ papal bull, Dum diversas, which authorized Portugal’s invasion and the monopoly of the slave trade in Africa.
• The Second Diaspora and Reverse Migration: The Second Diaspora involved migration from the South to the North and West during the $1940s$ and $1950s$ for economic opportunity and escape from blatant racism. Recently, a "reverse migration" has seen many moving back to the South/Southeast for family ties and lower costs of living.
• Double Consciousness: In the Du Boisian sense (W.E.B. Du Bois), persons of African descent must reckon with the reality of being simultaneously African and American, a tension reflected in their music.

Core Analytical Themes: Poetry, Praise, Power, Protest, Philosophy, and Politics

• Poetry: Represents a cornucopia of rhyme, texts, history, emotions, theology, and artistry.
• Praise: Honors the connectivity of all life and creation in traditional African cosmologies; there is no gap between the sacred and profane, the living and the ancestors.
• Power: An umbrella category covering authority, authenticity, justice, and the tension between community and systemic/personal evil.
• Protest: Frames the catalyst for African diasporan cultural productions that advocate for the marginalized and celebrate life.
• Philosophy: Involves complex thought, double meanings (double entendres), and the subtext within the language and thought of the music.
• Politics: Refers to interpersonal and communal dynamics, identity, story interpretation, performance practice, and music traditions.

Origins and Primary Musical Characteristics

• Verbatim Definition of Black Sacred Music (Hymnody): "Music of praise or adoration of God, religious poetry as pronouncement and affirmation, appropriate for corporate expression."
• Historical Timeline of African American Hymnody: Arises from African religious, aesthetic, and musical traditions mixed with European dogmas and styles.
• Richard Allen ($1760$-$1831$): Founder and minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; he published the first hymnal specifically for African Americans: A Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs from Various Authors ($1801$, Philadelphia).
• Musical Variables and Techniques: African American performance practice relies on oral tradition and includes:     * Timbre: Unique sound quality.     * Techniques of Delivery: The handling of musical variables.     * The Ring Shout: An expressive cultural ritual where dance and holy music coalesce, involving stamping, feet shuffling (without crossing legs, to satisfy anti-dance Baptist rules), and counterclockwise movement (a hidden protest against the sun’s movement).     * Vocal Elements: Cries, calls, hollers, call and response, heterophony, polyrhythms, blue notes, bent notes, pendular thirds, hums, elisions, glides, grunts, moans, and vocables.
• Trajectory of Roots (Portia K. Maultsby):     1. African American sacred traditions.     2. African American secular traditions (non-jazz).     3. African American secular traditions (jazz).

Typology: The Spirituals and the Black Folk Aesthetic

• Nature and Scope: Includes minstrels, jubilees, work songs, and religious antebellum songs. Enslaved persons created approximately $6,000$ extant spirituals (according to John Lovell Jr.).
• Musical Elements: Polyphonic sound, pentatonic (five-tone) scales, flattened notes, falsetto, syncopation, and call and response.
• Evolution through Art: Spirituals transitioned into "art songs" during the eighteenth-century reconstruction, popularized by university choirs like the Fisk Jubilee Singers.
• Religious Function: Termed "chants of collective exorcism," spirituals helped the oppressed deal with the social evil of racism. They offer eschatological hope despite the threat of lynching and beatings.
• Coping Mechanisms:     * Double Entendre: Using trickster elements and irony to communicate messages of escape (Underground Railroad) while appearing to sing purely religious themes.     * Signifying: Hiding identity politics in alleged mundane ballads to warn others of danger.
• Prominent Composers of Arrangements: R. Nathaniel Dett, Rachel Eubanks, Margaret Bonds, Edward Boatner, Undine Moore, Lena Johnson McLin, Hall Johnson, James Weldon Johnson, and J. Rosamond Johnson.

Typology: The Blues as "Secular Spirituals"

• Definition and Philosophy: Commentary on the destitution and despair of Black life; the blues provide a cathartic release for personal response to events.
• Origins: Sorrow songs of roustabouts and stevedores, field hollers, and spirituals.
• Structure: Call-and-response technique, instrumental improvisation, syncopation, duple meter, and a poetic structure of $AA'B$ in $8$ to $16$ measures.
• Harmonic System: A chord structure of tonic, subdominant, tonic, dominant, tonic ($\text{I-IV-I-V-I}$).
• Categories:     1. Rural/Country Blues: Earliest type; solo male singers with guitar, expanding to strings and jug bands.     2. Classic/City Blues ($1920s$-$1930s$): Women singers accompanied by orchestra or piano.     3. Urban Blues ($1940s$ and later): Uses electric guitars, drums, basses, and brass.
• Key Figures: William Christopher ("W.C.") Handy (the father of the blues); Ma Rainey (Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett Rainey).

Typology: Ragtime and Jazz

• Ragtime ($1893$-$1904$):     * Early Authors: Scott Joplin and Tom Turpin.     * Structure: Multi-theme sections follow a three- or four-part form with a design of $AABBACCDD$.     * Performance: The left hand plays simple march-like harmonies while the right hand plays syncopated embellishments.     * Regional Styles: Joplin (slow two-beat), James Scott (vigor/zest), Jelly Roll Morton (intertwined melodies), Fats Waller/Eubie Blake (Harlem style rooted in ring shouts).
• Jazz:     * Verbatim Characteristics: A hybrid of jubilee songs, blues, jigs, and shouts. As a verb, it engages "collective improvisation," fusing player and instrument.     * Genres: New Orleans style (collective improvisation), Swing (solo improvisation, mid-$1930s$), Bebop (fiery style, $1940s$), Cool Jazz (relaxed, somber sound, $1940s$-$50s$), Hard Bop (hybrid of blues and modern gospel), Jazz/Rock Fusion (mid-$1960s$).     * Major Figures: Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Art Tatum, Sonny Rollins, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane (jazz theosophist), Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, and Charlie Parker.     * Duke Ellington: Created three famous sacred concerts: Fifth Avenue Presbyterian NYC ($1965$), Cathedral of St. John the Divine ($1968$), and Westminster Abbey ($1973$).     * Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ): John Lewis, Milt Jackson, Ray Brown (later Percy Heath), and Kenny Clarke (later Connie Kay); wedded jazz with European classical tradition.

Typology: Gospel Music - Evolution, Legitimation, and Fluidity

• Definition: Gospel music focuses on the Christian message, Jesus’ teaching, and salvation by grace. Stylistically, it derives piano and vocal techniques from the blues.
• Mainstream Acceptance:     * The National Baptist Convention endorsed gospel in $1930$ (Chicago).     * Thomas A. Dorsey: The "progenitor" who worked for publishing enterprises and organized the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses.     * Roberta Martin: Organized the first mixed gospel choir (adding female voices to an all-male group) in the mid-$1940s$.
• Key Figures and Events:     * Mahalia Jackson: Vowed never to sing Gospel in a nightclub. Starred in the first big all-gospel concert at Carnegie Hall in $1950$.     * Rosetta Tharpe: Debuted at the Apollo Theatre in $1938$, bridging the secular and religious worlds.     * James Cleveland: Organized the Gospel Music Workshop of America in $1968$.
• Praise Music: A $21st$-century sub-genre featuring $1$ to $2$ verses, repetitive choruses, and electronic accompaniment.
• Fluidity Case Study: Rev. James Cleveland redacted Gladys Knight's "You Are the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me" into "Jesus Is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me."

Typology: Rhythm & Blues (R&B), Rock 'n' Roll, and Soul

• Birth of Rock 'n' Roll ($1954$): Paradigmatic song "Sh-Boom" by The Chords. Characterized by big rhythmic beats and teenage angst.
• Major Performers: Chuck Berry (electric guitar/vocals influenced the Beatles/Rolling Stones), Little Richard (introduced Gospel frenzy and boogie shuffle), and Fats Domino.
• Impact on Civil Rights: Songs like "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" and redacted spirituals were vital. Performers included Fannie Lou Hamer and groups like the SNCC Freedom Singers and the Montgomery Gospel Trio.
• Soul Music Categories:     1. Motown Records (Berry Gordy Jr.): Crossover pop/R&B suitable for dancing (The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Jackson Five).     2. Stax/Volt Records: Earthier, raucous sound (Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Rufus Thomas).     3. Atlantic Records: Used written arrangements and violins; transformed by Aretha Franklin's earthy gospel influence.

Typology: Hip-Hop - Contemporary Trajectories and Faith

• Origins: Born in the $1970s$ from block parties and street corners.
• Three Trajectories:     1. Block parties to Top $40$ to Gangsta Rap ($1990s$ N.W.A., Snoop Dogg).     2. Hip Pop: Risqu lyrics and commercial market focus.     3. Historical Awareness: Political and revolutionary aspirations (Public Enemy).
• Religious/Spiritual Aspect: Christian hip-hop witnessing to the lost and empowering youth. It embraces African philosophy finding fluidity between sacred and secular.
• Cultural Production: Sampling, beatboxing, scratching, graffiti art, and double-dutch jump roping.

Classical and Integrated Traditions

• Myth of the Concert Hall: Racism initially banned African Americans from majority-cultural sites, creating a gap in training.
• Negro Music Journal ($1903$): Promoted the concert-hall tradition while disavowing popular African American music.
• Key Composers: William Grant Still, William Dawson, Howard Swanson, Ulysses Kay, Camille Nickerson, and Margaret Bonds.

Significant Scholarship (Annotated Review)

• Eileen Southern ($1971$, $1997$): The Music of Black Americans: A History. Definitive text analyzing genres and composers. Founded The Black Perspective in Music ($1973$-$1990$).
• Hildred Roach ($1973$, $1994$): Black Music: Past and Present. Focuses on Pan-African music and African American internal influences.
• Samuel A. Floyd Jr. ($1995$): The Power of Black Music. Connects African rituals and myths to modern evolution.
• John Lovell Jr. ($1972$): Black Song: The Forge and Flame. The premier work on spirituals from a literary/historical perspective.
• James H. Cone ($1972$): The Spirituals and the Blues. Theological and cultural interpretation by the progenitor of Black Theology.
• Howard Thurman ($1975$): Deep River and The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death. Spiritual essays on inspiration and self-respect.
• Jon Michael Spencer ($1990$): Protest & Praise. Coined the term Theomusicology: musicology informed by theology to theorize about the sacred (religious), secular (theistic unreligious), and profane (irreligious/atheistic).
• Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan ($1997$): Exorcizing Evil. Interdisciplinary womanist perspective on redacted spirituals in the Civil Rights movement.