
Black spirituals, like white ones, grew out of nineteenth-century camp meetings where the races mingled freely. The balance of white and African ancestry in black spirituals is a matter of hot debate: the ring shout, which is definitely African, uses call and response, but call and response was also common in white fundamentalist churches, and part-singing came from whites. Black spirituals are about trial, sorrow, and the hope for freedom. Frederick Douglass, "A keen observer might have detected in our repeated singing of 'O Canaan, sweet Canaan, I am bound for the land of Canaan' something more than a hope of reaching heaven." Concert performances of spirituals by grounds like the Fisk Jubilee Singers introduced them to a wider public in the late nineteenth century. Soloists like Roland Hayes, Marian Anderson, and Paul Robeson broadened the audience. In the 1930s and 1940s the Library of Congress recorded spirituals surviving in parts of the South, especially the Sea Islands. Here we sample "Where Could I Go But to the Lord," from Front Porch Records' documentary album Yonder Come Day: Note Singing and Spirituals from South Georgia. (AU format) (Real Audio Format)