| The Negro Spirituals are really spiritual. | | | | until lately, and the work and labor |
| Neither conscious artistry nor popular | | | | spirituals characterized by strict |
| conception should ever take them away of this | | | | significance. |
| heritage, erroneous to their tradition and to | | | | |
| the spirituals folk genius to give them | | | | Indeed, in the Spirituals proper we can trace |
| completely different tone. Even though their | | | | the broken flinders of evangelical folk |
| creators beside «shouts" include in their | | | | rites, with confession, exhortation, "grief" |
| songs also the rhythmic elements of the | | | | talks and "love-feast" merriment as the |
| sensuous dance. And the main emotional | | | | common steps of a Protestant folk mass. It is |
| effect of these elements all together | | | | no way a problem of religious content or |
| completely exalted in the genuine intensities | | | | allusion, for most of the slave songs it is |
| of religious earnestness. To call them | | | | more delicate question of the feeling scope |
| Spirituals and not to treat them accordingly | | | | and the way of folk use. |
| is unfair. Emotively, African Negro songs are | | | | |
| really complicated. They touch upon the whole | | | | The distinctive feature of the Spirituals |
| length of human moods, with its already | | | | after all and their meaning is sheltered in |
| traditional religious overtone successfully | | | | their musical elements. The instant beauty |
| ingratiated in each instance of slave | | | | of the Negro folk song is in its harmonic |
| creation, but sometimes there can be | | | | composition, unlike the other more purely |
| observed a further a sudden change of mood | | | | rhythmic stress in the layman Negro music, |
| in a single spiritual, contradicting a | | | | which is the essentials of "ragtime" and |
| general subdivision. Emotional themes connect | | | | "jazz"; while viewing the one as the African |
| these songs to the race activities that they | | | | element in them, and the other as the |
| motivated, ranking them by their conformable | | | | altering influence of the religious hymn. |
| song-types. From this point of view we have | | | | |
| substantively four classes of spirituals, the | | | | Andrew Bolton is an experienced freelance |
| almost ritualistic supplication songs or | | | | writer. Having successfully completed a |
| actual Spirituals, the freer and more | | | | number of academic assignments, he now is |
| unbridled evangelical "shouts" or | | | | willing to share his experience in academic |
| camp-meeting songs, the folk negro ballads | | | | writing including Dissertation Abstract and |
| so much resembling the Spirituals proper | | | | Dissertations proposals providing students |
| that their originality has not been observed | | | | Dissertation Examples. |