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,...