Gospel Spirituals (con't)
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After the sermon they formed a ring, and with
coats off sung, clapped their hands and stomped their feet in a most ridiculous
and heathenish way. I requested the pastor to go and stop their dancing.
At his request, they stopped their dancing and clapping of hands, but remained
singing and rocking their bodies to and fro. This they did for about
fifteen minutes.(7)
The words “stow back” indicate that this spiritual
was used specificallyfor the shout ceremony. As the term is pass
down into gospel music, “stow back” becomes “step-back”:
CALL: Oh, stepback
RESPONSE: Stepback Jordan
CALL: Step way back
RESPONSE: Stepback oh chilly Jordan.
When this stanza is currently sung, the gospel
singer may make appropriate movements indicated in the text.
The spiritual, Anybody Here, from Old Plantation
Hymns by William E. Barton (1899), is an example in which, again, only
the chorus is borrowed:
Is there anybody here that love my Jesus
Anybody here that love my Lord?
Oh, I want to know if you love my Jesus?
I want to know if you love my Lord.
With minor textual alterations, this chorus appears
in the modern gospel version (ca1979) as:
Anybody here love my Jesus
Anybody here love my Lord
I want to know if you love my Jesus
I want to know if you love my Lord.
This custom of borrowing texts was already commonplace
among black Americans during slavery:
We have too, a growing evil, in the practice of
singing in our places of public and society worship, merry airs, adapted
from old songs, to hymns of our composing; often miserable as poetry, and
senseless as matter, and most frequently composed and first sung by the
illiterate blacks of the society.(8)
Similar borrowings are found in spirituals.
William Barton stated:
One song is satisfied to snatch a single line
from any convenient hymn, and pair it with one of its own in the refrain,
while borrowing couplets right and left for the stanzas.
While the fitting together of couplets and refrains
almost at random leads to some odd and incongrous combinations, upon the
whole one is surprised to find with what good taste the mosaic is made,
especially when the singing is led by an old-time leader with a wide range
of couplets to choose from. Some of these men when confronted by
an inquirer with notebook and pencil can hardly recall half a dozen of
these stanzas; but in the fervor of their worship they not only remember
them by the score but by a sort of in from different sources without a
second’s reflection or hesitation.(9)
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