The Co-existence Of Religion And Secularity

Ever since they embarked on the road to the American continent through the Middle Passage,the Africans had started their life of bitter enslavement.After settling in the foreign land,these trafficked African people were treated as cattle,deprived of basic human rights.By converting the slaves into Christians,the slave owner managed to find a holy excuse for their slave-keeping policy through intentional distortion of the Christian doctrines.In the beginning of the 19th century,the African American spirituals began to take shape in the religious gatherings.Imbibing both the form and content of the psalms of the white society,the spirituals have retained many of the characteristics of the African music.As a result of cultural amalgamation,the spirituals have reflected the inner voice of the enslaved Negroes.The present research consists of three chapters.In the first chapter the author has recounted the origin of the spirituals and reviewed their evolution.In the second chapter the author sets to investigate the music itself from such perspectives as rhythm,syllable,cadence and lyric.In the third chapter the author has explored the religious connotation of the spirituals by examining their status in the African theological culture and analyzing how the issues of sins are addressed in the lyrics. The secular characteristics of the spirituals were analyzed in light of their West African origin,features of creation,lyric meanings and ways of performing.Starting from the analysis of the ideological factors influencing or controlling the Afro-American music,this paper has discussed the history,characteristics,religious and secular connotations of the spirituals by adopting theories from such disciplines as history,religion,sociology and anthropology.