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The chronicle of Negro Spirituals begins deep in the bowels of slave ships where Africans from a multitude of nations, ethnicities and religions were chained together on the perilous Middle Passage from West Africa to the Americas. Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, approximately 12 to 20 million Africans shared this plight and from their collective experience, fashioned new cultures in the Caribbean, South America, the United States and other destinations of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
In the American colonies, the first Africans landed in Virginia in 1619 as a cargo of slaves stolen by a Dutch trader from a Spanish merchant ship in the Caribbean. Initially, their status was unclear. Some of the Africans were classified as slaves for life while a few served as indentured servants and were able to gain their freedom after a time. Anthony Johnson, for example, arrived in Virginia in 1621 as a slave aboard the English vessel James. By the 1630s, Anthony Johnson and his wife Mary had gained their freedom and had acquired a 250-acre plantation in Northampton County on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. By the end of the seventeenth century however, the status of Blacks in the American colonies had been set. Blacks were presumed to be slaves for life.
Despite the wrenching degradation of perpetual bondage, African-Americans forged their own cultures and identities. They preserved elements of their African heritage and adopted some components of the Europeans' Christianity, thereby creating something neither African nor European, but new -- African-American. Their praise and worship songs -- Negro Spirituals -- document the lived experienced of Blacks in bondage. Songs such as "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" and "Oh Freedom" attest to the alienation associated with enslavement and faith in a forthcoming liberation. And Spirituals such as "This LIttle Light of Mine" and "There Is A Balm in Gilead" still resonate today in American Churches.
Slaves, Smith Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina
Photo by Timothy O'Sullivan
Welcome to TwinProductions
We are a preservatorship of Negro Spirituals, a uniquely American music genre, shaped from the African Diasporic experience of enslaved Americans. Combining African syncopation with Christian tenets, enslaved Africans in America imbued their songs -- their jubilee and sorrow songs -- with the dream and hope of liberation and fulfillment in this world and the next.
Fisk Jubilee Singers, circa 1871
Early Pioneers of Classical Negro Spirituals
About Our Company
TwinProductions, a musicpreneurship, was founded on January 12, 2006 by Soprano Caroline G Gibson. The Company promotes awareness of African American folk music with a special emphasis on Negro Spirituals. Through lecture recitals, concerts and guest appearances, TwinProductions offers audiences an opportunity to experience live performances of Negro Spirituals and other musical genres originated and inspired by African Americans from the seventeenth century to the present.
To Schedule a Lecture Recital, Concert or Guest Appearance, please contact TwinProductions for pricing details at: twinproductions@twinproductions.org or 301.499.1099.
Please visit our Products Page for current offerings.
