Spirituals

Spirituals began when Africans were brought to the colonies and forced to work as slaves. These songs were used to communicate, pass the time, and tell stories. Spirituals allowed slaves to express their despair, pain and suffering and slaves used code words to talk about their masters or give hints about escape, directions, and escape route. Spirituals also allowed for religious devotion and unity and was homophonic, containg multiple parts to the same rhythm. It also incorparated sycopation, the unatural stressing of beats, as well as stomping and clapping to create beats because drums were banned. Banjoes were allowed for slaves who could play an insturements and the call-and-resoonse style was used regularly in Spirituals. Through the racial immpersonasions of African Americans males by white British or American men called blackface in minstrial shows, led to the integration of blacks and
Jazz was a cultural movement because it did not follow the accepted or liked styles of music at it's time and centralized in New Orleans due to it's racial and cultural diversity. The negro spiritual by Odetta, "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" originates from the time of slavery in the Unites states and I believe this song is displaying the sadness, yearning and brokenness that is a result of slavery seperating and destroying families, especially between child and mother.The lyrics, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child...A long ways from home...True believer... Sometimes I feel like I’m almos’ gone...Way up in de heab’nly land...There’s praying everywhere'', seem to express the sadness a child slave felt after being seperated from their mother. I believe this song is being told through the point of view of either a child that has died and is in a state of limbo feeling lost with no one, not even their mother, to guide them to