Mahony is an English instructor at Wayne County Community College inDetroit, Michigan. In this essay, Mahony discusses West African influences and multiple levels of meaning in African-American spirituals.
Folk song is the voice of a people, of a community. It tells of the sorrows, triumphs, and yearnings—not of the individual but of the collective. Folk songs are attributed not to a single composer or poet, but to a nation, a tribe or a race. This helps to explain the power and the beauty, as well as the miracle, of the African-American spiritual. In the introduction to The Books of American Negro Spirituals, the poet James Weldon Johnson marvels at the creation of this powerful music: "These people came from various localities inAfrica. They did not speak the same language. Here they were, cut off from the.....
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