From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom

Four: Christian Soldiers All: Spirituals as Heroic Expression

FOUR Christian Soldiers All: Spirituals as Heroic Expression As a prelude to his discussion of the spiritual song tradition of enslaved Africans, Harold Courlander in his book, NegroFolk Song U.S.A., observes that "the slaves brought to Christian service religious traditions their own, as well as established methods of treating musical and invocational ideas."! Of these traditions, he notes that They had clear-cut concepts of the role of music in life. Music permeated virtually every important phase of living in Africa, from birth to death. Singing related to religious activity had a specific character and specific requirements ... In religious rites, epic and dramatic actions of demigods, as well as their special powers and attributes were recalled and extolled. Those who served such dieties, sang songs of praise which alluded to their various powers, behavior, and noteworthy deeds. Much of the oral religious literature of the African layman consisted less of prayers (as we think of them) than of dramatic statements, in the form of song, relating to the dieties." Courlander concludes that, in America, "Confronted with new religious patterns, the New World African found in the Bible prolific material adaptable to the dramatic statement and, occasionally, the epic treatment.?" Although he examines several spirituals as examples of the epic treatment given to the lives of biblical figures by enslaved Africans, he neither indicates how these songs reflect and/ or reveal the influence of African religious traditions nor discusses those aspects of the spiritual song tradition in general which might reveal specific connections with African epic traditions or religious beliefs. Nevertheless, Courlander's suggestion that the spirituals represent 110/ Spirituals as Heroic Expression a transformation of African religious ritual and heroic song traditions offers a cogent explanation for the inclination of enslaved Africans to emphasize dramatic and heroic action in the spirituals. In various ways, others have noted the prominent role of biblical heroes in the spirituals as well as the epic-like qualities of the tradition. Sterling Brown, for instance, in a brief examination of the spirituals concludes that The spirituals make an anthology of Biblical heroes and tales, from Genesis where Adam and Eve are in the Garden, picking leaves, to John's calling the roll in Revelations. There are numerous gaps, of course, and many repetitions. Certain figures are seen in an unusual light; Paul, for instance, is generally bound in jail with Silas, to the exclusion of the rest of his busy career. Favored heroes are Noah, chosen of God to ride down the flood; Joshua, who caused the wall of Jericho to fall (when the rams' lambs' sheephorns began to blow); Jonah, symbol of hard luck changed at last; and Job, the man of tribulation who still would not curse his Cod." Lawrence W. Levine also comments on the the frequent references to biblical figures in the spiritual. He suggests that these references helped enslaved Africans in their efforts to develop one of the most important themes of the songs: In the world of the spirituals, it was not the masters or the mistresses but God and Jesus and the entire pantheon of Old Testament figures who set the standards, established the precedents, and defined the values; who, in short, constituted the "significant others." The world described by slave songs was a black world in which no reference was ever made to any white contemporary." While the spiritual song canon contains numerous songs that do not mention biblical figures at all, an impressive number are developed around their exploits and/or allude to their deeds in a meaningful way. Furthermore, the spirituals that recall biblical personages and events are by no means literal renderings of biblical texts. Rather they present biblical figures and situations creatively in a vernacular which redacts the language of the King James Bible to achieve a lofty poetic style replete with drama and action befitting epic expression. Although students of the spirituals have frequently alluded to the portraits of biblical figures as a distinctive feature of the songs, with Spirituals as Heroic Expression / 111 the exception of Courlander they have not viewed the African religious song tradition as a potential expressive model for spiritual song creation. In fact, critical discussion of the spirituals has been dominated by protracted debate and controversy over whether African cultural traditions had any influence at all on the creation of the songs. From an analysis of the complicated and often heated debates over...