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The composers' names have been lost to history. But the African-American slaves who wrote black spirituals overcame incredible injustices to create the first truly indigenous form of American music.

The spiritual music genre combines African rhythms, the five-note pentatonic scale, European-style harmonies and Middle Eastern Bible stories to create a thoroughly New World sound. The powerful musical legacy of those anonymous slaves lives on today in newer musical forms, including gospel, blues, jazz, and even hip-hop.

Usually sung without instrumental accompaniment, the spirituals were written to serve several purposes. Some were rhythmic chants, to make hard physical labor a little bit easier. The slaves hoeing a field would sing and swing their hoes in time, taking their minds out of the tedium and hard-work by concentrating on the rhythm. Others were written to express the sorrow of life, and to comfort and sustain slaves through their terrible suffering at the hands of slave-owners. Examples include "Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child," "Deep Down in My Heart," and "My Good Lord Done Been Here." Some songs used stories of emancipation from the Bible to rebuke slave-holders and give fellow slaves hope, songs like "Go Down, Moses," and "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?" The most interesting of all were veiled directions and reminders for slaves seeking to escape on the Underground Railroad: "Steal Away (to Jesus)," "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," "Wade in the Water" (so that tracking dogs will lose your scent), and "Follow the Drinking Gourd"- meaning follow the Big Dipper, which points to the North Star and freedom. At times, if the slaves' overseer got distracted or rode away to another part of the plantation, these latter songs would suddenly spring up in the fields, signaling those slaves who were ready to go north that it was time to run.

After the Emancipation Proclamation outlawed slavery in the rebelling states of the South, and the 13th Amendment banned the evil practice throughout the U.S., it seemed that spirituals might lose their relevance. The simple folk-song spirituals of the slaves were increasingly replaced by gospel, a form developed in northern black churches, which included complex harmonies taken from western hymns, and instrumental accompaniment. Like spirituals, gospel performances included hand-clapping, foot-stomping, and dancing; these aspects scandalized attendants of more traditional European-style Christian churches.

Gospel fulfilled

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