As Africans in America, the enslaved maintained their African way of life, including religious practices. Their religious rituals evolved around singing, dancing and other forms of bodily movement, which the European clergy criticized, describing them as “primitive,” “vulgar,” “pagan,” and contrary to the teachings of Christianity. To discourage and replace these “sinful” dances and “secular” musical events with sanctioned European religious activities in northern colonies, missionaries organized various proselytizing campaigns beginning in the 18th century. Despite the conversion of some enslaved and free Blacks, the clergy’s initial effort largely was unsuccessful. The Great Revival Movement mounted a century later in the South, however, led to the conversion of the enslaved masses, who were attracted to the emotional aspect of the camp meetings associated with this movement. As Christians, the majority of enslaved and free Blacks did not relinquish their African religious beliefs nor cultural traditions. They resisted European cultural conformity by transforming Christian worship services into an African-styled ritual, evolving the Protestant repertoire into an African American tradition, and reinterpreting Biblical teaching through an African world view and their experiences as slaves.

The spiritual began emerging in conjunction with camp meetings associated with the Second Awakening. This revival movement dominated religious life in the American frontier from the 1780s to the 1830s, attracting both Blacks (free and enslaved) and illiterate whites. Both groups revolted against the “dull” traditional hymns, favoring a livelier form of religious music created during the revival. At the end of daily meetings in their segregated tents, Blacks, according to a Methodist minister and other white observers, “continued the whole night, singing tune after tune,…scarce one which were in our hymn books.” He condemned this practice, noting it has “already visibly affected the religious manners of some whites.”

The conversion of the enslaved masses to Christianity in the early 19th century facilitated the development of the Negro spiritual as a distinct form of American religious music. Worshiping independently of whites in worship services led by Black preachers, the enslaved and freed Blacks spontaneously created songs using the African call-response and repetitive chorus structures. They also reinterpreted the European psalms and hymns in ways that had meaning to them as Africans in America. They, for example, improvised on the melodies, changed the rhythms, sped up the tempo, added repeated refrains and choruses, and replaced texts with new ones that often combined English and African words and phrases. The final product was an improvised African-styled song. A white observer of this change, commented that the white hymn composers “Watts and Newton would never recognize their productions through the transformations they have undergone at the hands of their colored admirers.”

Unlike much of European religious music, the folk spirituals often were spirited, and they accompanied religious dancing (later known as “the shout”). These early folk spirituals melded the Christian belief system with native African culture and from it created something uniquely African American, and by extension, American. Initially passed down orally, spirituals of the enslaved have been central in the lives of African Americans for over three centuries, serving religious, cultural, social, political, and historical functions. By engaging in the singing of spirituals, the participant experienced a form of freedom. The folk spiritual later evolved into Concert Spirituals, Rural Gospel, Spiritual as Art Song, and Freedom Songs.

Folk spirituals are spontaneously created and performed in a repetitive, improvised style. The most common song structures are the call-and-response (“Blow, Gabriel”) and repetitive choruses (“He Rose from the Dead”). The call-and-response is an alternating exchange between the soloist and the other singers. The soloist improvises a line to which the other singers respond, usually by repeating the same phrase. Group singing is performed with slight deviations from the melody line, rather than in unison or harmony. Song interpretation incorporates the interjections of moans, cries, hollers, etc., and changing vocal timbres. Singing is accompanied by handclapping and foot-stomping.