Saturday, September 12, 1998

Spirituals making a comeback in modern performances

By Maria T. Padilla

The Orlando Sentinel

"This little light of mine,

"I'm going to let it shine,

"Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine."

The verse from "This Little Light of Mine" is heard from concert halls to Hollywood, which featured the song in the 1994 movie "Corrina, Corrina," with Whoopi Goldberg.

Because the song sounds so much like gospel, few people would guess it actually is a Negro spiritual, one of this country's earliest African-American art forms. A song with slave-era roots, the spiritual had been gathering dust. But no more.

African Americans, especially well-known arrangers and composers such as Wynton Marsalis and opera singers such as Kathleen Battle, are pushing the spirituals out of dusty corners and into the national spotlight.

"There's been a real resurgence of this music from people who are expressing their own heritage," said Rudolph Cleare, executive vice president of the "Negro Spiritual" Scholarship Foundation of Orlando, Fla., which tries to bolster pride in the spiritual by sponsoring an annual competition among Central Florida black high school students.

This month, the foundation and the rest of Orlando are set to witness a rare musical convergence of opera, Negro spirituals and a black high school choir at the 40th anniversary opening concert of the Orlando Opera. Denyce Graves, one of today's hottest opera stars, will kick off the season with a program that includes spirituals. The Jones High School Choir of Orlando will accompany Graves on several numbers.

"We are so honored. I guess my mouth will fly open when I see her," said Edna Sampson Hargrett, choral director at Jones, which is Orlando's oldest historically black high school.

Hargrett, who has taught at Jones for 31 years, always has included a spiritual or two in her music programs. She says no person is well-rounded unless he or she knows some spirituals.

It's probably safe to say that every American knows at least one."This Little Light of Mine" is one of the better known spirituals, one that Graves will sing at this month's concert.

Other spirituals include "Amen," "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?," "Go Down, Moses," "Go Tell It on the Mountain," "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," "Kum Bah Yah, My Lord," and "Nobody Knows the Trouble I See."

Spirituals are appealing because they are soulful, sorrowful but also hopeful, with visions of a more just world beyond the grave. They spring from something that is honest and clear: a painful past and the often-hidden interior life of the black community.

A direct descendant of slave songs, spirituals deal primarily with religious themes, which held a double meaning for relationships between slave owners and slaves. For example, references to Egypt also could mean the South and pharaohs could be slaveholders. There's no mistaking that "let my people go" meant slaves. A few songs, such as "No More Auction Block," were more explicit.

The music's roots draw listeners even as they push away others who might not want to dwell on slavery and all that it entails.

"I would say spirituals are not valued. There are still lots of people, including blacks, for whom the word spiritual means slavery. And, 'Oh, my God, I can't talk about that,' " said Anthony Knight, of Deltona, Fla., a museum consultant and a board member of the Negro spiritual foundation.

Because spirituals came out of slavery, their authors remain anonymous. And although spirituals are not literature, the Norton Anthology of African American Literature signaled their importance by opening up the anthology with spirituals.

"There are two things black people did: Pray to God and sing about it," said co-editor and African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates in 1996, when the anthology was published.

The legacy of spirituals is still evident in black communities. The "talking back" or call and response heard among black churchgoers comes directly from slave songs and spirituals. The art form also helped build monuments, such as Fisk University's Jubilee Hall in Nashville, Tenn. The hall is named after the historically black college's Jubilee Singers, who were formed in 1872. They were the first to bring spirituals to concert halls nationwide, generating funds for the college.

In a reversal of sorts, Cleare is using spirituals to give away college scholarships to black high school students. Since its founding in 1996, the foundation has awarded about $15,000 in scholarships to students.

Each year, the foundation commissions a new arrangement of a spiritual that contestants must sing. This year opera star Grace Bumbry performed "You (and I) Can Tell the World."

It was a sign of clout for a new foundation to attract Bumbry, who in 1995 established a Negro spiritual group of her own, called the Grace Bumbry Black Music Heritage Ensemble.

Some parents in the audience were mesmerized.

"It was nice listening to those songs. It brought back pleasant memories of songs you heard when you were a child that you don't hear anymore and I don't know why," said Peromnia Grant, mother of the foundation's female vocalist winner Angela Grant, who now is a freshman at the University of Florida.

The foundation has plans to expand its competition statewide by 2000, because of the growing statewide interest in the high school competition.

Cleare said historically black high schools around the state have choral programs that "sometimes rival those of colleges."

One of these is the Jones High School Choir, which will share the spotlight during Graves' Sept. 13 concert at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre.

Performing with Graves will be a crowning achievement for the Jones Choir.

Graves, who last year appeared at Rollins College, is internationally acclaimed for her version of Bizet's Carmen. She's also a devotee of spirituals -- as have been many opera stars before her -- including Battle, Bumbry, Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price and the late Marian Anderson.

Last year Graves also sang a few spirituals during her Rollins performance, accompanied only by a pianist. Her 1997 debut solo album, "Angels Watching Over Me," is dedicated to the genre. It has 17 traditional spirituals.

In an interview with National Public Radio's classical music program host Martin Goldsmith, Graves said spirituals were the first songs she learned. Each song shines a light on her past.

"I feel the voices of my great-great-great-grandmothers, and those whom I never knew. I feel that their voices come through me with these songs and come through the songs themselves," Graves said in that interview.

Hers is one of many voices helping to keep spirituals alive.

"For me," Graves said, "it's a way of honoring who I am, and my lineage, and putting it on a platform where I believe it belongs -- right up front."

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(c) 1998, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).

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