Spirituals and Their Origin

Spirituals are American religious folk songs generally associated with African-American Protestants of the southern states of the United States of America. These African-American songs are characterized by syncopated polyrhythmic structure and the pentatonic five whole tones scale that makes them, above all, highly emotional. Spirituals are believed to be the most characteristic race genius inheritance yet in the USA. However, the elements making them really expressive of the Negro race also make them deeply representative of the soil hat gave birth to all them. Spirituals were for a long time believed to be the only American original folk music and all the researches trying to retrieve its origin were centered only on the essence and extent of its African heritage. Due to the fact that all slaves were brought to America from different parts of Africa, to find any clear African source of music is next to impossible. Polyrhythmic structure, syncopation, pentatonic scale and the character of text composition are the common elements of African music and the US black race spirituals.

90% of all the first Africans arriving to America were slaves. They were coming mainly from the West Coast of Africa. About their ways of living we know from the narrations made up by the slaves themselves. Most of them were working in plantations, the rest in town.