That changed with Mamie Smith's commercial success in 1920.
Ensembles such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers-established in 1871-popularized spirituals, bringing them to a wider, even international, audience.Īt first, major recording studios were only recording white musicians performing spirituals and their derivatives. Following emancipation, the lyrics of spirituals were published in printed form.
Biblical stories were memorized then translated into song. Prior to the end of the US Civil War and emancipation, spirituals were originally an oral tradition passed from one slave generation to the next. Many new derivative music genres emerged from the spirituals songcraft. While they were often rooted in biblical stories, they also described the extreme hardships endured by African Americans who were enslaved from the 17th century until the 1860s, the emancipation altering mainly the nature (but not continuation) of slavery for many. In the nineteenth century, the word "spirituals" referred to all these subcategories of folk songs. Spirituals encompass the "sing songs," work songs, and plantation songs that evolved into the blues and gospel songs in church. Spirituals (also known as Negro spirituals, Spiritual music, or African-American spirituals) is a genre of music that is "purely and solely the creation" of generations of African Americans, : 13, 17 which merged African cultural heritage with the experiences of being held in bondage in slavery, at first during the transatlantic slave trade-the largest and one of the most inhumane forced migrations in recorded human history, and for centuries afterwards, through the domestic slave trade.