Bibliography

Spirituals

Featured Songs:

The angels changed my name
The blood done sign my name
Come and go with me to my Father’s house
Every time I feel the Spirit
Go, tell it on the mountain
I know I’ve been changed
Ride on, King Jesus
Rise up, shepherd, and follow
Swing low, sweet chariot
There is a balm in Gilead
Where I shall I be when the first trumpet sounds

Featured Performers and Arrangers:

Harry T. Burleigh
James Weldon Johnson
John Rosamond Johnson
Fisk Jubilee Singers
Hampton Singers
Wings Over Jordan

Published Collections:

Publications of Spirituals, 1862–1900 >
Publications of Spirituals, 1901–1942 >

Indexes to Published Spirituals:

Index to Negro Spirituals (Cleveland, 1937, reissued in 1991): WorldCat

Eileen Southern & Josephine Wright, African-American Traditions in Song, Sermon, Tale, and Dance, 1600s–1920: An Annotated Bibliography, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Black Music (NY: Greenwood Press, 1990): WorldCat

Kathleen A. Abromeit, An Index to African-American Spirituals for the Solo Voice (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999): WorldCat

Early Discography:

Robert M.W. Dixon, et al., Blues & Gospel Records 1890–1943, 4th ed. (Oxford: University Press, 1997).

Randye Jones, Recorded Solo Concert Spirituals, 1916–2022 (McFarland, 2023): McFarland / The Spirituals Database: https://spirituals-database.com/

Recommended Resources:

“Songs of the Blacks,” Dwight’s Journal of Music, vol. 10, no. 7 (15 Nov. 1856), pp. 51–52: HathiTrust

Lucy McKim, “Songs of the Port Royal Contrabands,” Dwight’s Journal of Music, vol. 12, no. 6 (8 Nov. 1862): HathiTrust

“Slave Songs of the United States” [Review], Nation, vol. 5, no. 125 (21 Nov. 1867), p. 411: Archive.org

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Negro Spirituals,” Army Life in a Black Regiment (Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1870), pp. 197–222: Archive.org

Johann Tonsor, “Negro Music,” Music: A Monthly Magazine, vol. 3, no. 2 (Dec. 1892), pp. 119–122: Archive.org

Antonin Dvorak, “Music in America,” Harper’s Magazine, vol. 90, no. 3 (Feb. 1895), pp. 428–434: HathiTrust

H.F. Kletzing and W.H. Crogman, “Plantation Melodies,” Progress of a Race: The Remarkable Advancement of the Afro-American Negro (Atlanta: J.L. Nichols & Co., 1898), pp. 584–590: HathiTrust

W.E.B. Dubois, “Of the Sorrow Songs,” The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago, A. C. McClurg & Co., 1903), pp. 250–264: Archive.org

Angelo M. Read, “Negro melodies not American music,” Musical America, vol. 4, no. 13 (11 Aug. 1906), p. 2: Archive.org ; no. 20 (29 Sept. 1906), p. 13: Archive.org

H.J. Wilson, “The Negro and music,” The Outlook, vol. 84, no. 14 (1 Dec. 1906), pp. 823–826: Archive.org

Henry Hugh Proctor, “The theology of the songs of the Southern slave,” Southern Workman, vol. 36 (Nov.-Dec. 1907), pp. 584–592, 652–656: HathiTrust

F.H. Jenks & Frank Kidson, “Negro music of the United States,” Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 3 (London: Macmillan, 1907), pp. 359–362: Archive.org

Monroe N. Work, “The spirit of Negro poetry,” Southern Workman, vol. 37, no. 2 (Feb. 1908), pp. 73–77: HathiTrust

Henry Edward Krehbiel, Afro-American Folksongs: A Study in Racial and National Music (NY: G. Schirmer, 1914): Archive.org

John Wesley Work, Folk Song of the American Negro (Nashville: Fisk University, 1915): Archive.org

“Negro folk songs acclaimed as America’s musical treasure,” Musical America, vol. 28, no. 14 (3 Aug. 1918), p. 20: HathiTrust

Frances Grant, “Negro patriotism and Negro music. How the old ‘spirituals’ have been used at Penn School, Hampton, and Tuskegee to promote Americanization,” Outlook, vol. 121 (26 Feb. 1919), pp. 343–347: Archive.org

Natalie Curtis Burlin, “Negro music at birth,” Musical Quarterly, vol. 5 (Oct. 1919), pp. 86–89: HathiTrust

Robert T. Kerlin, “Canticles of love and woe: Negro spirituals,” Southern Workman, vol. 50, no. 2 (Feb. 1921), pp. 62–64: HathiTrust

John Tasker Howard, “Our folk music and its probable impress on American music of the future,” Musical Quarterly, vol. 7 (April 1921), pp. 167–171: HathiTrust

Alain Locke, “The Negro Spiritual,” The New Negro: An Intrepretation (NY: Albert & Charles Boni, 1925), pp. 199–213: Archive.org

Newman White, American Negro Folk Songs (Cambridge: University Press, 1928).

Homer A. Rodeheaver, Singing Black (Chicago: Rodeheaver, 1936).

Alain Locke, The Negro and His Music (Washington: Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1936).

Henderson Sheriden Davis, The Religious Experience Underlying the Negro Spiritual, dissertation (Boston University, 1950).

Miles Mark Fisher, Negro Slave Songs in the United States (Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1953).

John W. Work III, “The Negro Spiritual,” The Papers of the Hymn Society, vol. 24 (1962), pp. 17–27: HathiTrust

Dena J. Epstein, “Slave Music in the United States before 1860: A Survey of Sources,” Notes; Part 1: vol. 20, no. 2 (Spring, 1963), pp. 195–212: JSTOR; Part 2: vol. 20, no. 3 (Summer, 1963), pp. 377–390: JSTOR

Irene V. Jackson-Brown, “Afro-American Song in the Nineteenth Century: A Neglected Source,” The Black Perspective in Music, vol. 4, no. 1 (Spring 1976), pp. 22–38: JSTOR

Dena J. Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977): WorldCat

John Lovell Jr., Black Song: The Forge and the Flame (NY: Paragon House, 1986): WorldCat

George R. Keck & Sherill V. Martin, eds., Feel the Spirit: Studies in Nineteenth-Century Afro-American Music (NY: Greenwood Press, 1988).

Angela M.S. Nelson, “The Spiritual: In the furnace of slavery, a lasting musical form was forged,” Christian History, No. 31 (1991): CH

Patricia J. Trice, “Choral Arrangements of Spirituals: Birth and Perpetuation of a Genre,” Choral Journal, vol. 37, no. 1 (Aug. 1996), pp. 9–13: JSTOR

Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Exorcizing Evil: A Womanist Perspective on the Spirituals (NY, 1997).

Bernice Johnson Reagon, “Spirituals: An African American Communal Voice,” If You Don’t Go, Don’t Hinder Me (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, 2001), pp. 68–99.

Timothy W. Sharp, “Hallelujah! Spirituals: America’s original contribution to world sacred music,” Choral Journal, vol. 43, no. 8 (March 2003), pp. 95–99: JSTOR

Arthur C. Jones, “The foundational influence of Spirituals in African-American culture: A psychological perspective,” Black Music Research Journal, vol. 24, no. 2 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 251–260: JSTOR

Sandra J. Graham, “Spiritual,” Grove Music Online (10 July 2012): DOI

Kathleen A. Abromeit, Spirituals: A Multidisciplinary Bibliography for Research and Performance (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2015).

Sandra J. Graham, Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018): Amazon

Joyce Marie Jackson, “Continuity of consciousness: Spirituals and gospel,” Rivers of Rhythm: African Americans and the Making of American Music (Nashville: National Museum, 2020), pp 15–30.

Eric Sean Crawford, Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest in the South Carolina Sea Islands (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 2021): Amazon

Melva Wilson Costen, “African American Spiritual,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: CDH

Spirituals Research, ed. Kathleen Abromeit: http://www.spiritualsresearch.com/

IMSLP Petrucci Music Library: https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Spirituals

See Also:

African American Hymnody