Civil Rights Music

by Reiland Rabaka

  Here, however, it is important to emphasize that not all spirituals or gospel songs necessitated lyrical adaptation in order for them to qualify as freedom songs and be meaningful within the context of the Civil Rights Movement. This, of course, demonstrates the ways in which the spirituals, the first major music of the African American sacred song tradition, continued to evolve and speak to the special issues and ills of black life long after the Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth. Spencer (1990) insightfully explained:

  Not all existing church songs required textual revisions to meet the protester’s needs. For instance, the spiritual “Wade in the Water” was sometimes sung in wade-in demonstrations aimed at integrating public swimming pools and beaches. Spirituals like “Over My Head I See Freedom in the Air,” “Free At Last,” “Oh, Freedom,” and “I Been ‘Buked and I Been Scorned” were interpreted with obvious liberative meaning without modification. These songs, which had equipped black people with a system of “folk wisdom,” were reaffirmed in the sermons at mass meetings. . . . The original meaning of old spirituals was applicable in the new context. The ancestral messages of justice and liberation were related to the present pursuit of civil rights. (85)

  Now that we have a deeper understanding that the freedom songs were religious because they were unambiguously based on the music arising out of African American religion (and spirituality), and the African American church in specific, we can comprehend that, whether lyrically adapted or not, three key points should be emphasized about the freedom songs. First, as Martin Luther King never wearied of reminding both civil rights soldiers and staunch segregationists, non-violence, passive resistance, civil disobedience, and moral suasion are all essentially Christian ethics that were articulated and practiced by Jesus himself. In this sense, then, solemnly singing a freedom song instead of physically fighting back was emblematic of an ardent embrace of Christian ethics and the moral holiness and healing that Christ continued to inspire even as civil rights soldiers faced unimaginable hardships and heinous acts.

  Second, it is important to bear in mind that most of the freedom songs that were not explicitly religious nevertheless were focused on freedom and discursively developed the theme of freedom, which is a longstanding sacred leitmotif in African American history, culture, and struggle. To state the obvious, the ultimate concern and goal of the Civil Rights Movement was “freedom,” which is one of the reasons that freedom songs attracted both the religious and the irreligious, both the godly and the ungodly. The one thing that the religious and the irreligious involved in the Civil Rights Movement could agree on was the need for “freedom,” on the need for the eradication of racial segregation and the inauguration of authentic black liberation (both physical and psychological liberation).

  Lastly, one of the main reasons the Civil Rights Movement was so successful in enlisting the black masses to the blood-stained battlefields of Montgomery, Little Rock, Albany, Birmingham, St. Augustine, and Selma, among others sites of serious struggle, had much to do with the fact that it did not attempt to reinvent the wheel and, therefore, built itself upon the most influential institution in African American life, culture, and struggle: the African American church. In “Somebody’s Calling My Name”: Black Sacred Music and Social Change (1979), respected civil rights leader Wyatt Walker spoke directly to this point:

  The entire non-violent movement was religious in tone, and the music did much to reflect and reinforce the religious base on which it stood. In the course of its development, the movement drew into its wake many people who were non-religious, irreligious, and anti-religious, but singing freedom songs for them and for others of diverse persuasions was a means of comfortable participation. It was this development which contributed most to minimizing the distinction between the sacred and the secular within the black music tradition. The evolution of freedom songs and the impact of rhythm & blues prepared most of the ground [out of which] modern gospel grew. (181)

  Continuing to drive home the key point that the African American church embodies both sacred and secular interests, that it is fundamentally preoccupied with—to reiterate—heavenly salvation and earth liberation, and that the “non-religious, irreligious, and anti-religious” were attracted to aspects of African American church culture, especially black church music, in ways that enabled civil rights leaders and civil rights soldiers to mobilize via music, Walker went on to insightfully conclude:

  All of this review only serves to illustrate again the relationship between music and crisis in the black community. Since the chief repository of authentic black religious music remains in the church, and the church collectively attracts the largest segment of the black community, it follows, then, that the music of the black religious tradition can be a vital instrument for a ministry of social change. The black church has the troops and the inspiring music. The music of the black religious tradition operates on two levels: first, psychologically and emotionally—it locates the people’s sense of heritage, their roots, where they are and where they want to go; and secondly, it mobilizes and strengthens the resolve for struggle. A people’s sense of destiny is rooted in their sense of history. Black sacred music is the primary reservoir of black people’s historical context and an important factor in the process of social change. (181)

  This means, then, that the freedom songs, much like the spirituals and gospel, captured and conveyed the liberative or, rather, emancipatory aspects of God and black theology. In essence, they embody and express a revolutionary liturgy of black sacred song, which opened the door for religion to almost seamlessly move out of the churches of the black Protestant orthodoxy onto the highways and byways, as well as the country roads and ghetto streets, of black history, culture, and struggle. Religiously, it is on the country roads of the rural South and trash-filled ghetto streets of the urban North that the Afro-Christian ethics at the heart of the freedom songs could inspire civil rights soldiers to critique and confront the pharisaic system of white supremacy, racial segregation, and economic exploitation. Musically, the freedom songs were the epitome of Civil Rights Movement militancy with their remarkable mix of the sacred and the secular, as well as their committed quest for both heavenly salvation and earthly liberation. With these unique partly sacred and partly secular songs, African Americans were not simply singing about freedom but, more importantly, these songs were symbolic of black folk systematically fighting (via non-violence, passive resistance, and civil disobedience) for freedom.

  Although often overlooked by professional historians, freedom songs serve as historical documents that chronicle myriad movement events, including the various forms of protest and communal responses to injustice, as well as individual reflections and testimonials. As a result, freedom singer-songwriters were simultaneously history-makers and historians—indeed, they were participant historians: simultaneously historical actors and chroniclers at the heart of the great drama of mid-twentieth century American life, culture, politics, and society. For example, a song such as Sam Block’s “Freedom Is A Constant Dying” should not be merely interpreted as an expression or testimony of faith. It was so much more. As a matter of fact, “Freedom Is A Constant Dying” clearly indicates that it was composed by a freedom singer-songwriter who had: marched under the sweltering heat of the Southern sun; firsthand faced segregationist police brutality and the unforgiving fangs of their attack dogs; fallen unconscious as a result of the toxins of tear gas and the pungent spray of high-pressure fire hoses; felt the cringing crack of the horse whip and the brutality of the billy club against flesh, skull, and bone; and suffered utterly unjust and deliberately dehumanizing imprisonment.[5] Indeed, at their best, freedom songs double as testimony, as well as the essence of participant history and documentary history. By studying these songs in relationship to golden age gospel songs, including the religiosity (and spirituality) inherent in both, we can follow the chronology of the emerging history and theology of the Civil Rights Movement, and humbly bear witness to the simplicit
y and solitude, the breathtakingly beautiful private moments of prayer, praise, and protest in the Civil Rights Movement.

  Needless to say, a serious study of the Civil Rights Movement is contingent upon devoting ample critical attention to its gospel and freedom songs, much like a critical engagement of African American enslavement is incomplete without an in-depth exploration of the myriad meanings of the spirituals. Nevertheless, much like the spirituals were once dismissed and diminished in the history of African American enslavement, gospel and freedom songs have been routinely isolated and disassociated from the main currents of Civil Rights Movement history, culture, and politics when, in fact, they were central to, and at the core of Civil Rights Movement history, culture, and politics. I strongly believe that as twenty-first century scholars revisit the spirituals for their insight into the African American experience during the antebellum era, a similar practice needs to be put into play with respect to the prescient gospel and freedom songs that served as the soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement.

  When we intentionally transgress the boundaries between either an exclusively historical or exclusively musicological interpretation of the Civil Rights Movement and combine both perspectives in our analysis, then we can come to comprehend that at the height of the movement (circa 1960 through 1965—roughly running from the inception of the sit-ins through to the Selma to Montgomery marches) gospel and freedom songs embodied one of the major modes of expression and means of interpretation of the Civil Rights Movement, and that key historical moments and political events of the movement are documented in the music emerging out of the movement in ways they quite simply are not elsewhere in any other Civil Rights Movement artifacts or memorabilia. Obviously, then, the music of the African American church served as a sounding board and primary point of departure during the Civil Rights Movement years, enabling movement elders and youth organizers to create a transgenerational dialogue devoted to self and social change. During the movement years, the young and the old, the rich and the poor, black folk in the North and in the South were collectively entrenched in African American church culture, and one of the most obvious indicators of the modernization and urbanization of the black church by the middle decades of the twentieth century was the new soundtrack of church life and culture: gospel music.

  The Golden Age of Gospel Music: A Sonic Symbol of Tradition, Innovation, and the Strength to Continue the Struggle

  It was not the music of the enslaved ancestors, and it was not the music of the turn of the twentieth century Fisk Jubilee Singers. African American gospel music brought the past into dialogue with the present. It was a mixture of the old and the new. It sonically symbolized both tradition and innovation, as well as the fact that black folk were some way, somehow, almost miraculously summoning the strength to continue the struggle begun by the enslaved ancestors—as Du Bois aptly observed above, “[t]hey that walked in darkness [who] sang songs in the olden days—Sorrow Songs—for they were weary at heart.” In his classic The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States (1995), eminent African American musicologist Samuel Floyd observed that during the “Golden Age of Gospel” (circa 1945 to 1965), “gospel music was involved in cross-fertilizations that embraced the music of the core-culture church, the entertainment arena, and the fight for social and political equality” (200–201). By the end of the Golden Age of Gospel, the music was so popular that “[g]ospel choirs were organized in colleges and universities across the land, and longtime gospel stars began to receive wider exposure. The musical styles of these artists, while reflecting the affirmations of the new age,” Floyd went further, “were also continuous with the tradition” (196).[6]

  Similar to other genres of black popular music during their peak periods, the Golden Age of Gospel was predicated on innovation and experimentation. Seeming to mirror African American integration into mainstream America, by the 1960s gospel artists “began to perform in theaters, auditoriums, and stadiums, bringing new sounds from the core culture into the cultural arenas of mainstream America.” If, indeed, the spirituals are considered the foundational black musical form from which all others sprang, not merely gospel, then, golden age gospel’s incorporation of blues, jazz, rhythm & blues, and rock & roll elements is tantamount to musical offspring influencing their musical parent. In other words, this is a natural and logical part of the evolution of black popular music, or any ongoing art form for that matter. As Floyd nimbly noted:

  [B]oth the sounds and the venues of 1960s gospel were wide-ranging. The instruments of R&B had become part of gospel’s accompanying ensembles; church and community gospel choirs and choruses had begun to perform with symphony orchestras (although only on “special occasions”); performers had begun to feel comfortable on the concert stage and with the mass media; the material and stylistic borrowings from jazz and R&B were even more common in gospel than they had been before; and the down-home, gut-bucket fervor of earlier gospel had been overlaid and even replaced by the slick veneer of Motown-like productions. But the characteristic vocal sound of the gospel voice remained the same: the gospel delivery, with its typical embellishments and subtle rhythmic treatments, was retained and even enhanced, as were its yea-saying and call-and-response patterns and phrasings. In other words, the more refined contemporary black gospel music retained the characteristics of its predecessors, and its performance still depended on a performer-audience call-and-response rapport unlike that of any other musical experience. In addition, the role of the gospel singer as a caller, as a “leader of a service, not only the participant,” continued, even in the crossover forms of the genre—the “message” songs that bridge the gap between gospel and soul, such as “Oh Happy Day” (1969) by the Edwin Hawkins Singers and “Respect Yourself” (1972) by the Staple Singers. Such message songs were the nucleus of the repertoire of contemporary gospel in the 1960s. (196–197; see also Boyer 1979, 8)

  Expertly encapsulating the interplay of tradition and innovation within the gospel world of the 1960s, Floyd wrote of new “stylistic borrowings from jazz and R&B,” but carefully noted that no matter how much the musical backing may have changed over the years the “characteristic vocal sound of the gospel voice remained the same.” Call-and-response continued to be at the core of the gospel aesthetic, and the gospel singer, the modern black sacred song singer, continued to double as both a song leader and socio-cultural leader singing gospel songs that often doubled as “freedom songs” or “message songs,” as was the case with many of the sorrow song singers during enslavement. Bearing this in mind, gospel music historian Robert Darden, in Nothing But Love in God’s Water: Black Sacred Music from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement (2014), reminds us that “directed singing with an eye toward social and political transformation was a longstanding, almost ubiquitous by-product of African American religious institutions in the South” (103). In other words, African Americans singing sacred songs—which, as discussed above, includes freedom songs—“with an eye toward social and political transformation” was not new, but merely emblematic of “the next evolution in the history of the protest spiritual.” Gospel music, then, was simply “a new permutation of the basic musical form,” the “protest spiritual,” essentially “the spiritual with a blues beat” (88).

  From Darden’s point of view, classic and golden age gospel were more or less sacred blues or, rather, what has been termed “gospel blues.” In much the same manner that the blues often subtly comments on both the triumphs and tragedies of the African American experience, gospel (especially via its “freedom songs” subgenre) can be said to offer insights for both heavenly salvation and earthly liberation. According to Darden, golden age gospel music “combined religious lyrics, the biblically based storytelling of the spirituals, the close harmonies of jubilee, the rough-edged testifying voices of African American preachers, and the beat and improvisational musical and lyrical characteristics of the blues” (90). Here it is important to note that often when t
he blues influence on gospel music is acknowledged the term “the blues” is meant to denote not merely the blues in the narrow sense of the word, but is most often employed as an umbrella term suggesting all of the blues-derived black popular musics that have successively influenced the gospel sound and the overall gospel aesthetic (e.g., ragtime, jazz, boogie-woogie, jump blues, rhythm & blues, doo-wop, rock & roll, girl groups, soul, funk, disco, techno, house, and rap, etc.).

  Undeniably, Du Bois’s beloved black folk changed a great deal from their period of enslavement through to the Civil Rights Movement. However, when we seriously consider the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, or the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision, the society in which African Americans found themselves in from the turn of the twentieth century through to the Civil Rights Movement continued to be one predicated on American apartheid, racial segregation, racial violence (including the anti-black racist ritual of lynching), and outright anti-black racist terrorism.[7] Obviously, all of this taken together is enough to sufficiently give any group of people the blues and make them place a high premium on the production of blues-derived music to serve as soundtracks for their life-worlds and life-struggles. When we couple history, sociology, political economy, and religious studies with musicology it is easy to see that each form of black popular music, whether sacred or secular, classical or contemporary, was created to capture and convey the ethos of the African American experience at the moment of creation, peak period, or revival of the music under scrutiny.