by Brianna Castagnozzi

If literary language is the pen and paper, vernacular is the campfire and voice. Vernacular writing is “…linguistic codes that are primarily spoken rather than written, and also ones that have generally been perceived as having lower status than Standard English,” and this is corroborated by “vernacular” originally referring to the language spoken by house slaves (Ahmad 16). Two platforms for the printed publication of previously private folk-vernacular oral traditions were H. T. Burleigh’s classically documented African American spirituals and W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Crisis. In 1951, former business Crisis manager George S. Schuyler writes of the publication:

Here [were] the first literary contests, the first section devoted to Negro children, the first presentation of Negro artwork, the first feature stories about successful Negroes, the first full-fledged drive for Pan-Africanism, the first special numbers devoted to Negro educational advancement, the first articles on consumers cooperation. Here were scathing denunciations and flaming defense. (NAACP)

Black viewers’ opinions on this transformation of oral folk-vernacular to printed classical-literary ranged from hesitant to enthusiastic. Schuyler offers an optimistic possibility of The Crisis’ representation, citing the publication as “the first” in several opportunities for Black contributors to express themselves. Others, such as Zora Neale Hurston, viewed the printing of spirituals with contempt, for they lose their religious preciousness when performed by White musicians for White audiences; essentially, they are no longer spirituals but bland simulacrums (Wall 5). She referred to these printed versions commonly performed by quartets and soloists in music halls as “neo-spirituals” in her 1934 article, “Spirituals and Neo-Spirituals.”  In the presence of this complexity, publications of non-Standard English dialects offered to the public glimpses of languages with which African Americans used to communicate every day. This exposure forever changed the American literary and musical paradigm, and Black creatives’ methods of engaging primarily White audiences differed based on the transformed purpose and authorship of spirituals.

African American spirituals exist in the folk tradition as religious work songs created by enslaved African peoples. Drawing from biblical verses, spirituals are amalgamations of Christian allusion and African dances practiced among early plantation slaves. Some spirituals portend peace for the enslaved, and others lament for the loss of liberty or the birthing of African peoples into American slavery. “Balm in Gilead” is one example of a positively reinforced song, in which the singer, in spite of his life’s trauma, recalls that paradise awaits after death, metaphorized by the healing balm found in Gilead past the river Jordan. W.E.B. Du Bois coins the term “sorrow song” in The Souls of Black Folk; he describes these spirituals as “the rhythmic cry of the slave,” which stands “as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas” (Du Bois). Spirituals were sung at places of worship and at bush meetings. Within their authors they imbued a powerful sense of community; for this, spirituals were disdained by White America even as White America appropriated their verses and performed their melodies in concert halls. Henry Thacker “Harry” Burleigh transformed the genre of the spiritual by lending to it a printed classical form. He had been born into the folk tradition, citing “his mother as his first teacher” (Library of Congress). His maternal grandfather had been enslaved, and thus had been exposed to spirituals in labor and prayer; he shared with Burleigh an intergenerational connection centered around song. The cultural value of the spiritual is blatant: spirituals functioned as coping devices through which African Americans—mostly those of the South, initially—could build community and heal from generational trauma. Spirituals also contained details of the Underground Railroad, thus encoding within them the physical and emotional turmoil of these escape efforts.

Burleigh’s 1917 rendition of “Deep River” was so beloved, it “inspired the publication of nearly a dozen more spirituals the same year.” “Deep River” was published for solo voice, chorus, string quartet, organ, violin, cello, and concert band (Library of Congress). One is able to access a scanned document of the sheet music, the black ink printed clearly on the soft brown paper. It is printed in the key of E Flat Major and is in all manners professional: ownership and copyright are present, and Soprano I, Soprano II, Alto, and Piano parts are shelved accordingly. The lyrics appear as follows:

Deep River,

My home is over Jordan.

Deep River, Lord.

I want to cross over into campground.

Deep River.

My home is over Jordan.

River, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.

Oh, don’t you want to go,

To the Gospel feast;

That Promised Land,

Where all is peace?

Oh, deep River, Lord, I want to cross over into campground. (Library of Congress)

“Deep River” presents the singer’s pining for the biblical Promised Land and everlasting peace. The repeated phrase “deep river” as well as the refrain, “I want to cross over into the campground,” situates the text as a call-and-response piece, though it is not always performed this way. It may be that this accessibility, coupled with the religious theme, acquired for this spiritual nationwide recognition. The Library of Congress states that Burleigh’s work “transported a musical tradition that was born out of the plight of enslaved people, onto the concert stage, where they are revered as masterful examples of uniquely American music” (Library of Congress). The dissemination of these printed versions to White performers exposed Black folk music to the White American majority, which solidified Burleigh’s reputation as a contributor to the American musical canon. While this canon is inherently problematic due to its White-curated standards, Burleigh’s contributions signal a demand to be afforded the same recognition as White musicians.

Burleigh’s printing of the spiritual oral tradition both broadened the audience of the spiritual and incurred the disdain of Black creatives who considered the genre shift degrading to the purpose of the spiritual.  Under guidance from musicians at the National Conservatory of Music in New York, many of whom were foreign-born, Burleigh invested in his own ethnic value; he devoted the early part of the 1890’s to building a rapport with Antonín Dvorák:

After spending countless hours recalling and performing the African-American spirituals and plantation songs he had learned from his maternal grandfather for Dvorák, Burleigh was encouraged by the elder composer to preserve these melodies in his own compositions. In turn, Dvorák wrote themes inspired by the songs introduced to him by Burleigh in his Symphony no. 9 in E minor (“From the New World”). (Library of Congress)

One can imagine the elation with which Burleigh printed the spirituals. At the encouragement of Dvorák, at the time already renowned and serving as the Conservatory’s director, Burleigh engaged in musical cultural diffusion. Burleigh was able to confide within Dvorák, who was at once a White musician and a victim of anti-Czech sentiments printing his own heritage’s folk music. Within the Conservatory, Burleigh’s and Dvorák’s friendship was steeped in the recognition that the other’s dialect was dismissed as lesser by the public ear. Their work captures the attention of a White American audience; however, the prevalence of their music does not necessitate that it captures respect from these same listeners. Jean E. Snyder offers the following perspective:

Some commentators have seen Burleigh’s insistence upon a certain standard of musical excellence (as he defined excellence) as a capitulation to “white” musical values rather than as an expression of the intrinsic, artistic worth of the spirituals. (Snyder)

Those who view Burleigh’s transformation of spirituals into printed works as pandering to a White gaze feel he sacrificed sanctity for hollow recognition. Zora Neale Hurston has commented on such transformations, calling printed spirituals “neo-spirituals,” which are “the written compositions based on spirituals that were performed by soloists and quartets in concert halls.” She maintains that “true spirituals have never been performed to any audience anywhere” (Wall 5). Hurston draws value from the artist assuming a preacher-like role, and an audience that “can confirm [spirituals’] value” in the antiphonal tradition of call-and-response (Wall 5). It is understandable that she would not entertain the notion of a spiritual performed as an art song by a White pianist and singer in front of a White audience, for how can either of these parties confirm the value of the spirituals? If true spirituals, according to Hurston, are beyond the realm of performance and within the realm of direct racial history and self-healing, then Burleigh’s spirituals, having reached audiences of thousands, have been touched by false White interpretations. Ahmad points to this paradox of transforming the folk-vernacular into the written-literary: such works “derive much of their power—as well as their complexity—from this inherent, and inherently exciting, paradox” (Ahmad 18). Burleigh’s penning of the spirituals, and their subsequent dissemination to White and Black performers does not change or erase true folk spirituals, for these exist in the folk tradition outside of their printed versions. As an example, White appropriation, though harmful to spirituals’ authorship, and though perhaps an exploitation of printed spirituals such as Burleigh’s, is not powerful enough to erase the original spiritual as it continues to be sung for and by Black people today. In The Souls of Black Folks, Du Bois acknowledges the bastardization of spirituals that existed throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as entertainment for primarily White audiences. He describes how spirituals were incorporated in racist minstrel shows and how potent lines entered common conversation, stripped of their source. However, though the spiritual has been run through the throes of American exploitation, wherein it has been stripped of its authorship and treated with undeserved contempt, Du Bois insists spirituals exist in their true forms as intended by their writers:

It has been neglected, it has been, and is, half despised, and above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people. (Du Bois)

This “greatest gift” is why I argue that the printing of spirituals, as Burleigh has done prolifically, cannot touch the “true” spiritual, or the spiritual as Hurston and Du Bois describe it. One must also ask to whom the greatest gift is endowed: the automatic answer is to Black singers and listeners, but Du Bois calls spirituals “the sole American music” and the “single spiritual heritage of the nation” (Du Bois). This title echoes the American musical core that Black music historically occupies. It also acknowledges that Black music has in this same history reached the ears and souls of non-Black listeners; Du Bois’ words hold a sense of pride for this fact. To place Hurston’s concept of neo-spirituals at odds with Burleigh’s classically printed spirituals is to ignore the infinitely complex identifiers of Black traditional music. Because of his own Blackness, a strong relic of truth exists within Burleigh’s transcripts even if they are performed inadequately by White musicians. That substance less White performance is what Hurston refers to when she denounces neo-spirituals, but one must also acknowledge her pushback against accommodationism, specifically wherein Black artists strive to appeal to Eurocentric artistic standards. Hurston’s disdain, emblematic of many Black creatives of her time, cannot be dismissed. For example, in the case of Dvorák’s integration of spirituals into his compositions, a question of authorship and entitlement arises. A presentist understanding might conclude that Dvorák’s appropriation of the spirituals does nothing to acknowledge their truth, and may even shift the apparent authorship onto Dvorák instead of Black folk tradition. The opaqueness of authorship is part of the disdain for neo-spirituals and accomodationism. Both Burleigh and Hurston strove for recognition of and respect for the Black art forms over which they presided as masters but their engagement with paradigm differed.

Works Cited

Ahmad, Dohra. Rotten English. W. W. Norton & Company, no. 1, 2007, pp. 15-32.

“Deep River” by Harry Thacker Burleigh. Web.. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200185369/>.

Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. DuBois.” Free EBooks | Project Gutenberg, gutenberg.org/files/408/408-h/408-h.htm.

“History of the Crisis.” NAACP, 9 May 2021, naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-crisis.

“H. T. Burleigh (1866-1949).” The Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200035730.

Snyder, Jean E. “Hard Trials: The Life and Music of Harry T. Burleigh.” American Music, vol. 12, no. 2, summer 1994, pp. 197+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A15543166/AONE?u=nysl_oweb&sid=googleScholar&xid=54bbbb47.

Wall, Cheryl A. “Cheryl A. Wall: S&F Online – Zora Neale Hurston.” S&F Online – Zora Neale Hurston, sfonline.barnard.edu/hurston/wall_05.htm.