The Spirituals And The Blues Essay Research — страница 2

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spirituals do not contain “clear references to the desire for freedom”. The extent of suffering which the slaves endured could have altered their faith in God. However, the black slaves? investigations of the absurdities of human existence was concrete, and it was done within the context of the community of faith. They did not wonder whether God is just and right, but instead whether the pain of the world would cause them to lose faith in the word of God. One of the major sorrows which the slaves went through was more of the loss of the community than the actual physical brutality of slavery. This is why most of the spirituals focused on “going home” to be reunited with their families which had been broken through slavery. Although black slaves feared death, regarding it

as the opposite of life and therefore evil, they also accepted the inevitability of death, because they believed in Jesus? resurrection and also that death was not ultimate. The author also conveys the fact that references to “heaven” not only referred to a “transcendent reality” beyond time, but also to earthly places that blacks regarded as lands of freedom. These places include Africa, Canada, and the northern United States. They believed that life did not end with death, because they thought that God would rectify the wrongs against black people and this hope in a radically new future was defined the spirituals in two distinct ways: language about heaven as a different sort of place after death and language about the “last days”. In spirituals, heaven was the

place for the mourner, the despised, the rejected, and most importantly, the black. The spirituals, however, were not the only types of songs which blacks adopted as a solution to the problem of black suffering. The blues represent the secular dimension of black experience, meaning they are “worldly” songs which tell us about the blacks? suffering and surviving while being oppressed. They are secular in the sense that they “confine their attention solely to the immediate and affirm the bodily expression of black soul”. Most believe that the blues began to take form in the late 1800s, but it is widely agreed that the spirit and mood of the blues stretch well into the slavery days. The blues are closely related to the “slave seculars”, which are non-religious and

express the skepticism of blacks who could not take white preachers? religious faith seriously. The blues do not reject God, but rather ignore God by accepting the joys and sorrows of life. The biggest difference between the spirituals and the blues is that just as strongly religious the spirituals are, the blues are worldly. Another important distinction between the spirituals and the blues is that the blues grounds black hope in history, not in a plea for a better life after death. The author tells us that the blues can best be defined as an artistic response to the chaos of life combining art and life, poetry and experience, and the symbolic and the real. They describe the reality of black suffering without seeking to devise solutions for the problem of absurdity and, put

simply, recognize that blacks have been “hurt and scared” by the brutalities of white society. The Spirituals and the Blues is a very well-written and informative book. One strength is the fact that the author shows distinct differences between two types of songs which, for the most part, served the same purpose: reflecting the struggle for black survival under the harsh reality of slavery and segregation. The central theme in the black spirituals is the divine liberation of the oppressed from slavery, whereas the blues attempt to “carve out” a significant existence in a very trying situation. The blues had their foundation built upon historical experience and the fact that if it is lived and encountered, then it is real. One of the most convincing tools used by Cone

throughout the book are the excerpts of several spirituals and blues used to better illustrate what role these songs played in the black community. Another convincing tool Cone uses throughout are responses from musical experts of different races to these rich, creative songs somehow discovered by “these half-barbarous people”. Although many whites recognized the musical creativity of these songs, their own cultural experience often precluded their encounters with these deeper levels of human experience reflected in the spirituals and the blues. James H. Cone?s explanation of how these types of music were accepted by different races, use of excerpts, and conveyance of the different foundations upon which these types of music were built help to illustrate both similarities and