MUSIC FROM THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
extemporaneously. Te use of bended notes and the flatted third and seventh of the European major scale are aspects found in West African culture (Wald, 5).
Black spirituality is grounded in four pillars, as identified by the U.S. Black Catholic Bishops. It is contemplative, holistic, joyful, and communal. It is contemplative in that prayer is spontaneous and pervasive in the Black tradition, cognizant of God’s presence and transcendence among us. It is holistic, seeing no division between “intellect and emotion, spirit and body, action and contemplation, individual and community, sacred and secular” (Howze et al., 9). Black spirituality is joyful. It is celebratory and conveyed through movement (dance), song, exaltation, and thanksgiving. When we feel the goodness of the Lord, Black people express it, and we celebrate! Black spirituality is communal. Te community finds its meaning in the individual, and the individual finds completeness in the community. As the Black Bishops put it, “In African culture the ‘I’ takes its meaning in the ‘we’” (Howze et al., 10). Tese qualities and aspects speak to the heart, mind, soul, and spirit of the Black community.
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Te first genre of Black sacred music that emerged in the United States was the Negro Spiritual, forged in the “crucible of separation and suffering” (Bowman). From there emerged what Wyatt Tee Walker terms “hymns of improvisation,” the adapting of Euro-American Protestant hymnody to the cultural idiomatic expressions of the Black community (Walker, 97). Eventually African Americans composed their own hymns. Some leaders in this area were Charles Albert Tindley and Lucie Campbell. Later, in the early 20th century, Black gospel music emerged with Tomas A. Dorsey recognized as the Father of Gospel Music. In the late 1960s contemporary gospel developed, then praise and worship music, and Christian hip-hop. Spirituals developed partially through hybridization between African culture and European Protestant hymnody. Te hymns of improvisation to which Walker refers were an adapting of Euro-American hymnody to the cultural aesthetic of Blacks. Many scholars refer to this as “blackening” or “blackenizing” (Whalum, 347). I remember my mother would often add seasoning to pre-cooked food bought from stores. When I asked her why she would season food that was already cooked and seasoned, she would say she needed to add to it
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