Celebrating Black Music Month
5th June 2023 · 0 Comments
Part I
Freedom & Redemption Songs
At a time when attacks on African-American history and culture are spreading like a virus, bad news and events are everywhere, and sorrow fills the air, The Louisiana Weekly offers the best way to lift the Black community’s spirit: A Celebration.
In honor of Black Music Month and Hip Hop’s 50th Anniversary, The Louisiana Weekly celebrates the creativity and genius of African Americans who used various music genres to communicate amongst themselves, express emotions, offer solace, encouragement and guidance in the struggle for equality and justice, and speak truth to power, and lyrically document the Black experience. Music is our North Star, and the continuation of oral traditions started on African shores. To that end, The Louisiana Weekly presents a series of articles about Black music and the musical contributions of Louisiana and New Orleans-born African Americans.
Arthur C. Jones, a clinical psychologist and professor emeritus of Music, Culture, and Psychology at the University of Denver, is an authority on “spirituals,” sacred songs created and first sung by enslaved African Americans. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho,” “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” “Go Down, Moses,” “Steal Away to Jesus,” “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?,” and “Wade in the Water,” are among the hundreds of remarkable religious folk songs created by African Americans.
Jones founded the Spirituals Project in the 1990s to preserve and revitalize the music and social justice teachings of the “spirituals.” As a psychologist, Jones understood the impact these songs had on the psyche of African Americans during slavery and immediately after the Civil War.
Jones’ “Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals – Revised Edition” arrived in bookstores last week. Published in 1993, the revision offers insights into spirituals as social action music and answers what they have to teach us about the problematic social issues confronting us today.
Much gratitude is also due to Lucy McKim Garrison, William Francis Allen and Charles Pickard Ware, American song collectors who published “Slave Songs of the United States” in 1867. The group transcribed songs sung by the Gullah Geechee people of Saint Helena Island, South Carolina.
In 1862, McKim traveled to the Sea Islands of South Carolina with her father, James Miller McKim, an American Presbyterian minister and abolitionist, as he gathered information on the conditions for newly freed slaves for the Philadelphia Port Royal Relief Committee. This exposed McKim to the music of former slaves just after they had been freed, a time of significant social change.
In 1865, McKim married Wendell Phillips Garrison (a son of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison). She published two songs, “Poor Rosy, Poor” and “Roll, Jordon, Roll.” They were the “earliest slave songs to be published complete with music,” according to The Journal of Roots Music. Many others followed.
Interestingly, these spirituals, like songs in various genres created by African Americans throughout American history, were copied by non-Blacks. To their credit, they shared the songs with worldwide audiences. But what should be considered is the money made from their publishing, recording, and performing of these songs that catapulted non-Black versions of these songs to the top of music charts. In contrast, African-American recordings of the same songs languished at the bottom of music listings.
For example, “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” was sung by former slaves whose owners had abandoned Saint Helena Island before the Union Navy arrived to enforce a blockade.
However, the best-known recording of “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” was released in 1960 by The Highwaymen, whose version briefly reached number-one hit status as a single. The Highwaymen group comprised country music’s top artists: Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson.
“Rock O’ My Soul,” also known as “Rock My Soul,” “Bosom of Abraham,” or “Rocka My Soul,” is another traditional African-American spiritual included in the “Slave Songs of the United States” collection. It was first documented by William Francis Allen, who attributed the song’s origin to the state of Virginia.
One of the earliest recorded versions was made in 1937 by the Heavenly Gospel Singers. However, notable artists who have recorded the song include the Jordanaires, Louis Armstrong, Lonnie Donegan, Peter Paul & Mary, and Elvis Presley.
“Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” originated during slavery but wasn’t published until 1867 as “Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Had” in “Slave Songs of the United States.”
The song was recorded by Marian Anderson, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong, Harry James, Paul Robeson, and Sam Cooke.
Yet, decades after her death, the Queen of Gospel, New Orleans’ own Mahalia Jackson, brought spirituals into the mainstream music world. Jackson’s accomplishments ran parallel to other Louisiana artists and the wellspring of America’s first indigenous music form, Jazz, born in New Orleans.
The late great jazz pianist and professor Ellis Marsalis called jazz “traditional music,” in an interview with journalist C.C. Campbell-Rock for her article on Brass Band Music, which appeared in the Jazz & Heritage Festival Magazine in the late 1970s.
Jazz grew from the traditional music performances by enslaved Africans in Congo Square in New Orleans. Legend states that enslaved Africans were allowed Sundays to rest and engage in recreational activities in Congo Square. They played so-called crude instruments, including congas, during these feted events.
Later, the first Jazz (jass) musicians, including Buddy Bolden, Freddie Keppard, and others, engaged in “cutting contests” where audiences listening to them would determine who played the best music. Today that competition is called the Battle of the Bands.
New Orleans African American musicians are famous for many other music genres, including Brass Band music, Blues, Rhythm & Blues, Funk, and Hip Hop.
Louisiana is also the birthplace of Zydeco music, created by an African American.
Chris Strachwitz, the founder of Arhoolie Records, described Clifton Chenier as the inventor of the modern zydeco style: “He’s one-of-a-kind – a genius musician, a unique, remarkable human being.” The album “Clifton Chenier: 60 Minutes with The Zydeco King” includes Chenier’s best-sellers from the archives of Arhoolie Records. Chenier’s first album for Arhoolie, “Louisiana Blues & Zydeco” featured one side of blues and R&B; the other featured French 2-steps and waltzes.
Many people think Chenier, best known for his accordion artistry and vocals, was a Cajun music artist. However, that is different from how he described his music.
Chenier, an Opelousas, Louisiana native, told writer Ann Savoy in an interview that “Zydeco is rock and French mixed together. It’s the same thing as rock and roll but it’s different because I’m singing in French.”
During the 1950s, Chenier was associated with R&B, recording for legendary labels like Specialty and Chess. His influences were Fats Domino and Professor Longhair. Chenier’s first single for the Specialty record label, “Ay Tete Fille (Hey, Little Girl),” a cover of a Professor Longhair tune, was released in May 1955.
Chenier is the first French-speaking Creole to be presented with a Grammy award on national television in 1983, according to the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
“Zydeco Sont Pas Sale” (“The Snap Beans Aren’t Salty”) on the album “King of the Real Creole French Zydeco, Clifton Chenier,” can be found on the Smithsonian’s Folkways website along with other songs from various ethnic groups, including African Americans.
This article originally published in the June 5, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
