Spirituals

(Photo credit: Black Music Scholar)

I'm not Christian. I'm definitely not Black. I don't believe in Jesus; certainly not as the messiah or my personal lord and savior, at any rate. I can't exactly relate to the Black American experience on a personal level (other than in very limited circumstances). My upbringing was deeply segregated from the musicality and pathos of spirituals.

That's why it's probably going to feel weird for some people that a White Jewish boy is a fan of spirituals.

Yet, I love 'em — Take My Hand Precious Lord, His Eye Is on the Sparrow, Wade in the Water, Sing Low Sweet Chariot, Down By the Riverside, and so on.

But there's something about those songs that just speaks to my heart, despite the lack of any substantive rationale. The field hollers, camptown verses, folkloric lyrics, subversive interpretations, and endlessly creative instrumentation. They've got sorrow, hope, laughter, weeping, joy, love, life, death, and so much more backed into the smallest emotive pieces of music possible.

The history of spirituals is, of course, uniquely African-American. This music wasn't made for White folks. It was made for a people being tested, every day, in trials by fire, lash, billy-club, rope, and bullet. These songs are more than just something to be consumed. They command respect, for theirs is the power and the grace to turn the world's worst trauma into something beautiful. Something that, honestly, all White Americans should be awed by, feel humbled, and come to understand is the testament to a legacy we didn't create but that we certainly did inherit.

Indeed, I doubt Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey could even imagine that, at some point in the future, the song he committed to paper (which had partially existed in numerous forms long before him) would someday inspire some little boychik in Costa Mesa learning to play saxophone in his parents' garage.

But it did. All of those songs did. Even now, I listen to them in the quiet of night when my soul cries out for comfort, when my heart is pained from a barb of sorrow lodged within, when I need healing...

Here's a favorite for you, too.