Andrew Wilson-Dickson

Church Music in the African-American Tradition

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One of the richest contributions to church music in America has undoubtedly come from the heritage of the African-Americans who came to America as slaves. Their hymns and spirituals, which are sung today across the world, give evidence of both the extreme hardships and the fervent faith that was a part of their experience in America.

Africans in America

A glance down the “for sale” columns of eighteenth-century American newspapers would reveal dozens of small ads such as this: TO BE SOLD a valuable young handsome Negro Fellow about 18 or 20 years of age; has every qualification of a genteel and sensible servant and has been in many different parts of the world.… He lately came from London, and has with him two suits of new clothes, and his French horn, which the purchaser may have with him.

Slavery had begun two centuries earlier—the first slaves were brought to America by Sir John Hawkins in 1563. The plantations that developed in America’s middle colonies in the eighteenth century increased the demands for slaves enormously, bringing the number by the 1750s to 300,000. By the end of that century this figure had tripled. One estimate suggests that altogether 15 million black slaves were brought to the continent (including the West Indies and South America) before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.

The Music of Africa

The wonderful musicality of Africa came with the slaves. It could be heard even in the appalling and life-threatening conditions of the slave ship: The slaves on the ship] sang songs of sad lamentation.… They sang songs expressive of their fears of being beat, of their want of victuals, particularly the want of their native food, and of their never returning to their own country. (Ecroyd Claxton, Minutes of the Evidence … Respecting the Slave Trade, 34, pp. 14–36, House of Commons, quoted in D. J. Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War [Urbana, Illinois, 1987].)

The slaves on board had to make music whether they liked it or not, being forced to dance for the entertainment of the sailors: and if they do not, they had each of them [the boatswain and his mate] a cat to flog them and make them do it. (Ibid., p. 8)

The many musical traditions brought over from Africa were transformed by the conditions of slavery and by the arbitrary mixing of peoples of differing cultures (this was a specific policy believed to make the slaves less rebellious) but they were not eradicated. On the contrary, music and dance remained, as in Africa, far more than a diversion from the hardship and injustice of slavery. They were vital expressions of identity occasionally permitted in a life of almost unremitting labor.

Dancing and music-making using traditional instruments were celebrated at festivals such as Pinkster Dagh (a corruption of “Pentecost Day”) when white spectators could look on at a great carnival of ecstatic dancing and music lasting several days.

It was also possible to hear the musical expression—the hollers—of black slave-workers in the fields and open spaces: Suddenly one raised such a sound as I never heard before, a long, loud, musical shout, rising and falling, and breaking into falsetto, his voice ringing through the woods in the clear, frosty night air, like a bugle call. As he finished, the melody was caught up by another, then by several in chorus. (F. L. Olmstead, Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, vol. 2 [New York, 1856], 19, and quoted in E. Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 2d ed. [New York, 1983], 156.)

The conversion of the blacks to the Christian faith went ahead slowly, for not all whites felt it appropriate for their slaves to know for themselves the privileges of their faith. But in such scraps, as the slaves could pick up, they discovered the God who ignores human barriers, who delivers people from oppression, and in whose sight everyone is equal. These were messages of hope and eventual liberation that came to be celebrated in music and dance of great power: it was musicking and dancing … with their unique power to weld into a higher unity the contradictory experiences of sorrow, pain, joy, hope, and despair, that were at the center of their religious expression. (C. Small, Music of the Common Tongue [London, 1987], 87)

Hymns

So when the slaves adopted Christianity and began to sing the Psalms and hymns in the white churches (albeit segregated) they brought a life and vigor to the music which the whites could not fail to notice: … all breaking out in a torrent of sacred harmony, enough to bear away the whole congregation to heaven. (S. Davies, Letters from the Reverend Samuel Davies and Others … , quoted in C. Hamm, Music in the New World [New York, 1983], 128.)

The skill and passionate sincerity in Christian music-making was brought into the homes of white Christians. In 1755 the Rev. Samuel Davies described the slaves singing from their Psalters and hymnbooks:

Sundry of them have lodged all night in my kitchen, and sometimes when I have awaked about two or three o’clock in the morning, a torrent of sacred harmony has poured into my chamber and carried my mind away to heaven.… I cannot but observe that the Negroes, above all the Human species that I ever knew, have an Ear for Musicke, and a kind of ecstatic Delight in Psalmody … (S. Davies, quoted in C. Hamm, Music in the New World, 128.)

By now it will be evident how significant are those last few words, for through their continued celebration of “ecstatic delight,” the black community in America has proferred a great gift to the legacy of Christian music.

It was not until the 1770s that blacks were permitted to form their own churches. The first hymnal for black churches was published in 1801, the Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns Selected from Various Authors. The hymns, with texts by Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and others, were selected by Richard Allen, minister of one of the first independent black denominations, the African Methodist Episcopal Church (his church was in Philadelphia). The many editions of this influential hymnbook (even up to recent times) have been a touchstone for the changing tastes of hymn singing in many black congregations. The early editions, for instance, contain simple, folklike tunes popular at the revival meetings of the late eighteenth century. Subsequent editions contained the most popular contemporary spirituals.

The folk tunes of the early editions were not to everyone’s taste. A Methodist Minister, J. F. Watson, wrote in 1819 of a growing evil, in the practice of singing in our places of public and society worship, merry airs, adapted from old songs, to hymns of our (the whites’) composing: often miserable as poetry, and senseless as matter … most frequently composed and first sung by the illiterate blacks of the society. (J. F. Watson, Methodist Error [Trenton, 1819])

Spirituals

Camp meetings were an important basis for the growth of what are now known as spirituals. These songs, whether sung by blacks or whites, were essentially the music of the countryside. The blacks brought special qualities to their spirituals, namely, a background of field hollers (see above) and the ecstatic character of their African musical heritage.

The words of the spirituals were directly biblical, drawn especially from passages which speak of liberation (Moses, Daniel, and the Book of Revelation were favorites) and perhaps adapted from popular English hymns, for example, the popular hymn by Isaac Watts:

When I can read my title clear
To mansions in the skies,
I’ll bid farewell to ev’ry fear,
And wipe my weeping eyes.
This became the basis for several spirituals, such as the following:
Good Lord, in the mansions above,
Good Lord, in the mansions above,
My Lord, I hope to meet my Jesus
In the mansions above.
My Lord, I’ve had many crosses, and trials here below;
My Lord, I hope to meet you,
In the mansions above.

The music tended to be of the call-and-response type. This simple structure, so common in African traditional music, allows great freedom: no books are needed, for the chorus is easy to pick up and the solo calls can be improvised on the spot. All this was accompanied by hand-clapping and foot-stamping, creating Christian protest music of distilled and concentrated ecstasy.

White spirituals of the same period often adapted the texts of hymns in the same kind of way, perhaps repeating lines or adding a short refrain (like “Glory, hallelujah!”) between them, just like the black spirituals. The music was often borrowed or adapted from well-known folk-melodies.

Conversely, black Christians were well aware of the songs that the whites were singing in the camp meetings and were happy to sing tunes from white traditions. There were more pragmatic reasons for white ministers’ disapproval of the wild conduct of black worship in the South. The words of their songs had layers of meaning which could be as temporal as they were spiritual, such as the following lines from the spiritual “Dere’s No Rain,”: “no more slavery in de kingdom/no evil-doers in de kingdom/all is gladness in de kingdom.” (Quoted in E. Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 159.) Besides being a spiritual home in “the heavens above,” “de kingdom” could have also meant the North, where an escape from the bondage of slavery was possible.

One organization to assist slaves to flee their masters was called the Underground Railroad. A black slave, Frederick Douglass, became involved with it in 1835 in an attempted escape and later explained the coded messages embedded in spirituals: We were, at times, remarkably buoyant, singing hymns and making joyous exclamations, almost as triumphant in their tone as if we had reached a land of freedom and safety. A keen observer might have detected in our repeated singing of “O Canaan, sweet Canaan,” something more than a hope of reaching heaven. We meant to reach the North—and the North was our Canaan. (F. Douglas, My Bondage and My Freedom [New York, 1855], 87, quoted in E. Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 143.)

Many whites felt that the preaching of the Christian gospel of justice and liberty for all men was dangerous. It seems they were right.

The Period of the Civil War

The population of the industrial areas of North American grew rapidly during the nineteenth century. With the inexorable move towards the abolition of slavery, more and more black churches were established that did not have to suffer the strict control of the white Episcopal church. They reflected a number of traditions, from an orderliness that emulated the atmosphere of many white congregations, to an ecstatic and physical abandon characteristic of African tradition.

African Worship

Frederika Bremer visited some black churches in Cincinnati in 1850. The Episcopal church there left her with the impression of a service that was “quiet, proper and a little tedious.” But the African Methodist church was quite a different matter: I found in the African Church African ardor and African life. The church was full to overflowing, and the congregation sang their own hymns. The singing ascended and poured forth like a melodious torrent, and the heads, feet, and elbows of the congregation moved all in unison with it, amid evident enchantment and delight in the singing.… (A. B. Benson, ed., American of the Fifties: Letters of Frederika Bremer [New York, 1924])

Another report comes from William Faux who visited a black church in Philadelphia in 1820:
After the sermon, they began singing merrily, and continued, without stopping, for one hour, till they became exhausted and breathless.… While all the time they were clapping hands, shouting and jumping and exclaiming, “Ah Lord! Good Lord! Give me Jesus! Amen.” (W. Faux, Memorable Days in America … [London, 1823], 420)

Such descriptions are evidence that informal dance was a central part of much black worship. Paradoxically, it was the suppression of dance by influential Puritan whites in the eighteenth century that encouraged its development when the black churches became independent.

The Abolition of Slavery

By the 1840s the ideological split between the Northern and Southern states was affecting every aspect of life. The white Southerners no longer holidayed in the North, nor sent their sons to be educated in the famous Northern universities of Yale, Princeton, and Harvard. The issue that polarized North and South was slavery. The Northern states, better educated and more liberal than the South, had long accepted its abolition as inevitable, but the Southern states refused to comply. The issue split the church: in 1840 the Methodists in the South were unable to agree with those in the North over the morality of slavery; Baptists divided on the same issue a year later. (The rift between the Methodists was not formally settled until 1936.)

The issue was finally settled in the Civil War, where the eventual defeat of the Southern forces allowed Congress to bestow freedom on slaves in all states in 1865. Tragically, this victory did not necessarily improve the lot of the ex-slaves, many of whom found themselves worse off than before. In an atmosphere of vengeance, the South established Black Codes and Jim Crow laws that made segregation almost universal. Blacks were still dependent on whites for their livelihood and given no chance to improve their position. The deprivation and suffering of ex-slaves were made worse still by the activities of white gangs such as the Ku Klux Klan, which attempted to preserve white supremacy by merciless terrorism.

The exodus of liberated slaves from the South, therefore, continued for the rest of the century. Gradually the spirituals of the countryside were replaced in the minds of migrant freedmen by the music of the growing city churches. A schoolteacher in Tennessee noted this change after the Civil War: How I wish you could hear my children sing their strange, wild melodies, that bring back so vividly the old slave life with its toil and servile ignorance. Yet their old plantation songs are falling into disuse, and in their stead, we hear chanted daily the hymns and psalms so familiar to Northern ears. (L. W. Slaughter, The Freedmen of the South [Cincinnati, 1869], 134)

But the spirituals were preserved in invaluable collections, the first and most important of which was Slave Songs of the United States. They were also popularized worldwide by black singing groups, such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers, at a time when the slave culture that produced their music was rapidly disappearing.

But true folk music (like the original spirituals) is a delicate plant. Its transportation away from its natural surroundings and the popular acclaim that follows inevitably changes and probably diminishes it. It seems that the essential qualities of the slave spiritual cannot be sensed from even the earliest collections of the music, let alone from more recently published versions. Its clearest evocation may only lie in the recorded eyewitness accounts of the culture that produced it.

Church Music in the American Colonies

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The preceding article traced the outlines of the revivalist music tradition in both Europe and America. The following article looks more closely at the church music in the period of American colonization and revolution. Church music during this period was based on European models, especially the Psalm singing of the Calvinists. Later, the rise of singing schools and the presence of groups such as the Moravians and Shakers produced church music that was distinctively American.

A census of citizens of North America in 1790 revealed that only 5 percent professed any religious affiliation. Today that figure is 95 percent, of whom nearly half worship regularly in a Christian church. These simple statistics represent a growth that might be the envy of Christians in Western Europe, whose numbers have suffered a steady decline over the same period.

The story of the development of Christian music in the United States is a complex and colorful one, additionally important for the impact that it has had on the world at large. North Americans do not keep their faith to themselves. In 1985, Protestant Christian missionary societies alone spent more than $500 million in supporting overseas missions and that figure is rising yearly. The 20,000 missionaries that the sum sends out worldwide take the hymns and songs of America with them.

The American Heritage

Compared with Europe, Christianity in the United States has developed over a mere few hundred years, without the support of the wealth and traditions of an established church. These two facts may have some bearing on the present strength of faith in the United States.

The first Christian settlement, in Jamestown, Virginia, was established only in 1607. These English settlers and the immigrants who followed them from other parts of Europe arrived with none of the resources that those they had left behind could take for granted. Their life in the New World began with the poverty and hardship that had driven them there in the first place. There was no church wealth built up over centuries, no Christian traditions of worship. They had nothing except what they carried with them, probably no more than a Bible and a metrical psalter.

Christianity in North America has grown since those times as a fire grows from a spark. But a healthy suspicion of ecclesiastical power has remained. The style of worship still valued most highly is one of directness and simplicity, without undue ceremony.

Life in North America is too easily known by its urban side, the extraordinary blend of decadence and deprivation that is supported by the technology of instant communication. For between the huge cities, there are vast and sparsely populated areas of countryside in which small communities enjoy continuity of traditions in life and faith. Here the true Christian music of North America is to be found. It is folk art, which in its formative years had no chance of being influenced by music as an art form, for classical music remained undeveloped in North America until the mid-nineteenth century. Even today it remains largely untouched by the sophistication of European traditions.

Establishing a New Tradition

The Christian music sung by the early white settlers was that of the metrical psalms. Indeed, the pilgrims left their European homes with the psalm tunes ringing in their ears: They that stayed at Leyden feasted us that were to go at our pastor’s house, being large; where we refreshed ourselves, after tears, with singing of Psalms … and indeed it was the sweetest melody that ever mine ears heard. (Edward Winslow, “Hypocrisie Unmasked,” and quoted in W. S. Pratt, The Music of the Pilgrims [Boston, 1921], 6.)

For the French Huguenots in Florida or the English and Dutch Puritans of New England, psalm-singing was at the heart of their musical expression of faith. Its importance to the early Christian communities is evident from the first publication of any kind in America, the Bay Psalm Book. Remarkably, it was published in Boston as early as 1640 and its pioneering spirit is evident from the preface: God’s altar needs not our pollishings: for wee have respected rather a plaine translation … and so have attended Conscience rather than Elegance, fidelity rather than poetry … that soe wee may sing in Sion the Lords songs of prayse according to his own will; untill hee take us from hence, and wipe away all our tears, & bid us enter into our masters joye to sing eternall Halleluiahs.

The Bay Psalm Book did not contain any music, but recommended the tunes of Ravencroft’s Whole Book of Psalms “collected out of our chief musicians.”

The practice of “lining out” (described in some detail in Chapter 19) was established early in America, as the Rev. John Cotton made clear in 1647: For the present, where many in the congregation cannot read, it is convenient that the minister, or some other fit person … do read the psalm line by line before the singing thereof. (Cotton Mather, Singing of the Psalms a Gospel Ordinance [1647], and quoted in P. Scholes, The Puritans in Music [London, 1934], 265.)

The results for American psalmody were as extraordinary as for the Old World. The same person who sets the Tune, and guides the Congregation in Singing, commonly reads the Psalm, which is a task too few are capable of performing well, that in Singing two or three Staves, the congregation falls from a cheerful pitch to downright Grumbling, and then some to relive themselves mount an Eighth above the rest, others perhaps a Fourth or Fifth, by which Means the Singing appears to be rather a confused noise, made up of Reading, Squecking and Grumbling.

In many places, one Man is upon this Note, while another is a Note before him, which produces something so hideous and disorderly, as is beyond Expression bad … and besides, no two Men in the Congregation quaver [decorate the tune with extra notes] alike, or together; which sounds in the Ears of a good Judge, like Five Hundred different Tunes roared out at the same time … (T. Walter, The Grounds and Rules of Music Explained [Boston, 1721])

By the early eighteenth century, some ministers were beginning to clamor for a more “Regular” way of singing, causing “Heats, Animosities and Contentions” among the old guard. Typically, it was the country areas that resisted any suggestion of change: Tho’ in the polite city of Boston this design [the new way] met with general acceptance, in the country, where they have more of the rustic, some numbers of elder and angry people bore zealous testimonies against these wicked innovations, … not only … call the singing of these Christians a worshipping of the devil, but also they would run out of the meeting-house at the beginning of the exercise. (K. Silverman, Selected Letters of Cotton Mather [Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971], 376)

In New England, new ways of singing eventually supplanted the old, but not in other parts of North America. Extraordinarily enough, there are still isolated parts of Appalachia and the Southeast where the old practice of lining-out is still practiced, particularly among remote Baptist churches. It is an oral tradition—just as it was 300 years ago—where the congregation relies on its memories of the tunes and sings in heterophony (“500 different tunes roared out at the same time”) and at an extremely slow pace.

The Singing Schools

The new way of singing was really only a return to what today’s church musicians would call normality; the Americans called it “singing by note.” But education had to be provided for such a change. As a minister observed as early as 1720: Would it not greatly tend to promote singing of psalms if singing schools were promoted? … Where would be the difficulty, or what the disadvantages, if people who want skill in singing, would procure a person to instruct them, and meet two or three evenings in the week, from five or six o’clock to eight, and spend their time in learning to sing? (Quoted in H. W. Hitchcock, Music in the United States [New Jersey, 1974], 7.)

These singing schools sometimes provided more than they were originally intended, as a student at Yale revealed in a letter to a friend: At present, I have no inclination for anything, for I am almost sick of the World & were it not for the Hopes of going to the singing-meeting tonight & indulging myself in some of the carnal Delights of the Flesh, such as kissing, squeezing &c. &c. I should willingly leave it now. (Quoted in I. Lowens, Music and Musicians in Early America [New York, 1964], 282.)

These singing schools had their parallels in English country parishes. They were set up on a temporary basis in a schoolhouse or a tavern with the blessing of the local church, and worshipers were encouraged to enroll for a course of singing lessons (provided that they brought their own candles with them). The lessons were based on instruction in solmization, a system of pitching adapted from the invention of Guido d’Arezzo whereby the notes of a scale are identified by names. Where Guido used a different name for each note of the scale, the pioneers of the singing schools used a simplified system using only four: fa, sol, la, and mi. Thus an upward major scale would have been sung to the note names fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la, mi, fa. Such a system might seem oversimplified to the point of confusion, but the standard of singing in many churches improved noticeably. As Samuel Sewall wrote in his diary in the early 1720s: “House was full, and the Singing extraordinarily Excellent, such as has hardly been heard before in Boston” (M. H. Thomas, ed., The Diary of Samuel Sewall, New York, 1973, Vol. 3, p. 285).

Gradually, other systems to help people to read notation developed, from the crude system of the Rev. John Tufts, which placed letters indicating the sol-fa names in the appropriate positions on a five-line stave, to the shape-note systems of the turn of the eighteenth century, where shapes corresponded with the four sol-fa names—a triangle for fa, a circle for sol, a square, la, and a diamond, mi.

The many new tune-books appearing from the 1750s onward catered to the developing interest in part-singing: Youths Entertaining Amusement (1754), Urania (1761), Royal Melody Complete (Boston, 1767, containing music by the British composer William Tans’ur), and others. The music of some of these books contained pieces complicated enough to be called anthems rather than psalm tunes.

Such pieces testify to the musical ambitions and even the success of some of the singing masters who, when their course of lessons was complete, would move on to the next town to start again. Nonetheless, the instructors themselves were self-taught. There were no colleges teaching the rudiments of music, let alone the conventions of counterpoint and harmony. All that was picked up by the very imperfect example of oral tradition and through printed music.

Changing tastes in the expanding urban populations gradually ousted this rough-hewn music from city churches, but in the South and at the westward-advancing frontiers it remained popular. Nineteenth-century music collections continued to print the music of the singing-school pioneers of a century before: Virginia Harmony, Kentucky Harmony (1816), Knoxville Harmony (1838), Union Harmony (Tennessee, 1837), Southern Harmony (1835), and many others.

These collections also show quite clearly how folk tunes, originally wedded to secular words, came to be accepted in church worship with Christian texts. From these sources come a number of folk hymns whose tunes have penetrated the consciousness of the English-speaking world. In Southern Harmony, for instance, can be found Wondrous Love and a hymn by Isaac Watts put to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne.” The best-loved of all, perhaps, is Amazing Grace, originally set to “There is a land of pure delight” in Virginia Harmony.

A collection of 1844 called The Sacred Harp has a special significance, having given its name to the annual Sacred Harp Conventions which still meet today to celebrate this Christian folk-music—clear evidence that it is still known and well-loved in the Southern states.

Moravians and Shakers

Two traditions of worship established in North America in the eighteenth century created Christian music of particular richness. The cultures from which they sprang were opposites, but both for a while chose isolation rather than integration with the societies around them. Such insularity was necessary for something exceptional to grow, but it also prevented such Christian music from finding its way into the worship of other denominations.

As they traveled to North America on an evangelistic mission in 1737, John and Charles Wesley found that they were sailing with a group of Moravian Brethren with the same intentions. These Moravians had come from Herrnhut, a settlement in north Germany, but the origins of their movement, the Unitas Fratrum, lay in the reforming zeal of Jan Hus in sixteenth-century Bohemia. The revival of the Moravian Church in 1722 sent missionary expeditions to the Virgin Islands, then to Greenland, South Africa, Jamaica, and North America. Communities of Moravians were founded in Bethlehem in Pennsylvania and in parts of North Carolina.

For the German-speaking Moravians, as for the Lutherans, music generally held a treasured place in life. They brought instruments with them from north Germany, and there were instrument-makers among them. Thus bands were available for ceremonial occasions of all kinds—weddings, christenings, and so on.

The Moravians had knowledge of the European music they left behind them, a knowledge that was rare in eighteenth-century America. Their Christian music lay at the center of this activity and only quite recently has the true extent of this music been uncovered. Not only did they have their own hymn writers, but they also boasted choirs which, judging by the music composed for them, must have possessed skills quite beyond those of the New Englanders.

The Shakers, “The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing,” started life as a small English sect to which Ann Lee had been attracted at the age of twenty-two in 1758. She was a humble woman from the slums of Manchester who became convinced that she was “Ann the Word” and “the Bride of the Lamb.” Some of her converts emigrated to North America, where, in the early years of the nineteenth century, the Society’s membership grew to about 6,000, settling mostly in areas of the Northeast such as New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. One of her converts described Mother Ann Lee: Mother Ann Lee was sitting in a chair, and singing very melodiously, with her hands in motion; and her whole soul and body seemed to be in exercise. I felt, as it were, a stream of divine power and love flow into my soul, and was convinced at once that it came from Heaven, the source and fountain of all good. I immediately acknowledged my faith, and went and confessed my sins. (S. Y. Wells, ed., Testimonies Concerning the Character and Ministry of Mother Ann Lee and the First Witnesses of the Gospel [Albany, 1827], 101, and quoted in D. W. Patterson, The Shaker Spiritual [Princeton, 1979], 18.)

The believers lived in small, exclusive, and self-sustaining villages. Their very strict moral sense kept the sexes apart, even by providing separate entrances and staircases in homes and meetinghouses—though women and men had equal status. They built their own dwellings and churches, grew their own food, made their own furniture (now highly prized and much copied), everyone covenanting their wealth to a central fund.

Most Shaker songs were created as a spontaneous act of praise and under the control of the Holy Spirit, whether in a worship meeting or outside. A Shaker pamphlet of 1782 described the spontaneity of their worship, clearly related to charismatic meetings today: One will begin to sing some odd tune, without words or rule; after a while another will strike in; and then another; and after a while they all fall in, and make a strange charm—some singing without words, and some with an unknown tongue or mutter, and some with a mixture of English … (Some Brief Hints, of a Religious Scheme, Taught and Propagated by a Number of Europeans, Living in a Place called Nisqueunia, in the State of New York [Salem, Mass., 1782], quoted in E. D. Andrews, The Gift to Be Simple [New York, 1940], 10.)

In the earlier days, these songs were passed down in oral tradition, as the Shakers initially resisted the idea of notating their music. The first printed collections of Shaker tunes did not appear till the 1830s, but surviving manuscripts and notebooks show the true scale of their creativity and contain as many as 10,000 tunes.

Shaker music is a uniquely refreshing reminder of the simplicity of much Christian music in America. In country areas around and beyond the Shaker communities, where education was even harder to come by and illiteracy was high, music was still being handed down orally from one generation to the next. It was largely a folk art, recalled as much as read, each performer adding a new flavor to an old song.

Church Music from Gregorian Chant to Polyphony

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Music in early Christian worship consisted of melody only. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, more complex music, featuring the simultaneous singing of more than one melodic line, was composed for use in worship. For several centuries, this complex—or polyphonic—music was composed by many of Europe’s most famous and skilled composers.

For the first eight hundred years of Christian worship, the musical vehicle for the liturgy was melody. It might take the form of a cantillated prayer of extreme simplicity or of an ornate Gradual for a solemn occasion. But whatever its complexity, monody—the single line of melody untainted by any accompaniment—was the most perfect and satisfying symbol for the unity of Christian believers. It was the advent of notation that allowed polyphony—many melodies together—to develop, in directions that have since made Western music unique.

When buildings are constructed on land which is plentiful, the area they occupy is not a critical factor in their design, and conurbations can be made up of low-story houses, spreading outwards from a center. But as soon as space becomes restricted, then the cost of land rises and economics dictate that buildings must become taller if housing expansion is to continue. So it was with the Gregorian chant. The limits of human endurance meant that solemn chant had developed to its greatest practical length. But a continuing desire for its adornment on special occasions led musicians to consider embellishing the chant in another way altogether; by singing different melodies simultaneously.

The first steps towards a new concept of singing, known as organum, came mostly from France. For a long time, France had favored a special quality of ceremony in worship. The choir at the Abbey of St. Martial at Limoges for instance, gradually took to singing certain items of the Mass by splitting the choir into parts, one group singing the original chant and others (perhaps the basses) singing four or five or eight notes below. The idea (called organum) was a simple method of introducing a further degree of decoration into the chant, but one which nonetheless needed no writing down.

Other possibilities were explored too, especially those which allowed the two parts to become more independent. This freer type of organum required one part to sing the original chant and a second line to supply a more florid part against it. One of the most valuable collections of these two-part pieces, the Winchester Troper, was compiled during the tenth and eleventh centuries at Winchester Cathedral in southern England. This precious manuscript contains all the different sorts of troping (interpolations and additions to the chant) as well as the two-part “florid” organum.

The Beginnings of Polyphony

The great Cathedral of Notre Dame is perhaps the best known of all Gothic cathedrals. Considering its immense size and complexity, it was built with considerable speed between 1163 and 1250, the bulk of it being complete by 1200.

The creation of such a magnificent structure is evidence that France was beginning to enjoy a period of stability and affluence, becoming a country in whose towns culture and learning could flourish as never before. During the building of the new cathedral, composers working at its music school were notating a type of organum more lavishly decorated than anything yet heard.

An anonymous treatise reveals the names of two famous composers from Notre Dame at this period, both canons at the cathedral: Leonin was the best composer of organum. He wrote the Great Book of Organum, for Mass and Office, to augment the Divine Service. This book was used until the time of the great Perotin, who shortened it and rewrote many sections in a better way … with the most ample embellishments of harmonic art. (Anonymous IV, quoted in the Pelican History of Music, vol. 1 [London, 1982], 224.)

This once again draws attention to the continuing delight of Christians in elaborating the liturgy, and luckily the Great Book itself survives. Corroborative evidence shows that the florid vox organalis added to the chant was sometimes improvised from a number of stock musical phrases. Certainly, the special expertise of the musicians was rewarded accordingly: And to each clerk of the choir who will attend Mass, two deniers, and to the four clerks who will sing the Alleluia in organum, six deniers … (Quoted in C. Wright, Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame, 500-1500 [Cambridge, 1989], 339.)

As in the music of the Winchester Troper, Leonin’s pieces (compiled between about 1150 and 1170) supplied an extra vocal line. This was added to sections of chants which in themselves were already decorative—such as Graduals or Alleluias at Mass or Responsorial chants at Matins.

The extra line that Leonin added (called the duplum or second part) needed considerable singing skill. It had to be sung quite fast, not least because as many as forty notes of the duplum fitted to just one of the original chant. As a result, some parts of the chant became greatly stretched out, with its singers spending perhaps twenty seconds or half a minute on a single note. The words, of course, progressed even more slowly.

No wonder then that Perotin, Leonin’s successor, shortened parts of these compositions. At the same time he enriched the harmony still further by adding new voice-parts: a triplum (third part) and sometimes even a quadruplum (fourth part). The independence of the vocal lines can now properly be called polyphony.

Another feature of this remarkable music was the presence of a regular pulse in triple time. The perfection of the number three was inherent in the medieval worldview. As the theorist Jean de Muris wrote in 1319: That all perfection lies in the ternary number is clear from a hundred comparisons. In God, who is perfection itself, there is singleness in substance, but threeness in persons; He is three in one and one in three. Moreover: [there are] … in individuals generation, corruption and substance; in finite timespans beginning, middle and end; in every curable disease onset, crisis and decline. Three is the first odd number and the first prime number. It is not two lines but three that can enclose a surface. The triangle is the first regular polygon. (Quoted in P. Weiss and R. Taruskin, Music in the Western World [London, 1984], 69.)

The rhythm of this early polyphony soon resolved itself into the quick triple time so characteristic of medieval music of this period. Until this time there had been little need for written guidance to the singers concerning rhythm, but the complexity of the Notre Dame organum for the first time necessitated a system for notating rhythm as well as pitch. (The complexities of modal rhythmic notation are described in W. Apel, The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 5th ed. [Cambridge, Mass., 1961].)

The startling effect of the choir suddenly changing from the lone and sinuous melody of the chant to three- or even four-part music did not please everyone. There are records of an increasing number of complaints from churchmen about this elaborate music. John of Salisbury, a contemporary of Perotin, wrote a particularly vitriolic criticism: Music sullies the Divine Service, for in the very sight of God, in the sacred recesses of the sanctuary itself, the singers attempt, with the lewdness of a lascivious singing voice and a singularly foppish manner, to feminise all their spellbound little followers with the girlish way they render the notes and end the phrases … (Quoted in P. Weiss and R. Taruskin, Music in the Western World [London, 1984], 62.)

But such criticism cannot have represented the majority in the liturgical corridors of power, as the practice quickly spread to a number of monasteries and cathedral churches across Europe.

The Motet

Where the original plainsong melody had a melisma—a number of notes sung to one syllable—the composers of Notre Dame felt it appropriate in their organum settings to make the chant move along faster and in rhythm. Strange though it may seem, they took to writing these sections (called clausulae) separately from the main piece, so that one could be substituted for another, like engine spare parts.

Before long, these sections were soon being performed as separate pieces in their own right. What is more, composers started to add completely new sets of words to the upper parts (yet another example of troping), creating what they called a motet, that is, a piece with words to the added lines (from the French mot, meaning “word”).

The result is the most sophisticated musical form known to the Middle Ages, a piece in two, three, or even four parts, whose foundation (the so-called tenor) is a fragment of chant, snipped out, as it were, from the middle of a traditional melody. The tenor had a regular pulse imposed on it, while around it were added between one and three freely composed voice-parts with new texts. By this means it was perfectly possible for up to four different sets of words to be sung together.

Motet technique was developed in a number of ways in the thirteenth century, which were not by any means always pleasing to the church. Such pieces became popular for secular ceremonies (at banquets for instance) and popular tunes would be incorporated in them. Some of these found their way back into church motets, and Pope John XXII in 1323 was compelled to issue a papal bull, in which he made some very significant complaints: Certain disciples of the new school … prefer to devise new methods of their own rather than to sing in the old way. Therefore the music of the Divine Office is disturbed with these notes of quick duration. Moreover, they … deprave it with discants and sometimes pad out the music with upper parts made out of profane songs. The result is that they often seem to be losing sight of the fundamental sources of our melodies in the Antiphoner and Gradual.… The consequence of all this is that devotion, the true aim of all worship, is neglected, and wantonness, which ought to be shunned, increases. We hasten to forbid these methods … (Quoted in P. Weiss and R. Taruskin, Music in the Western World [London, 1984], 71.)

The Conductus

Not all medieval part-music had the complex structure of the motet, for the church initiated another type of polyphony in its continuing pursuit of the “embellishment of harmonic art.” During the twelfth century, it became customary in services of solemnity to lead the lesson-reader to the lectern with a short song called a conductus (from the Latin conducere, to lead).

Once again, more complex and lengthy chants of this processional type developed as musicians delighted in the addition of as many as three extra parts against the original. The result was a piece of music newly composed in all parts (not usually based on traditional chants or other tunes) and with all voices singing the same text.

Franco of Cologne, a composer and theorist of the later thirteenth century, described how such pieces were written: He who wants to write a conductus should first invent as beautiful a melody as he can, then using it as a tenor is used in writing discant (in other words, writing another melody against it, the tenor being the original “beautiful melody”). He who wishes to construct a third part (triplum) ought to have the other two in mind, so that when the triplum is discordant with the tenor, it will not be discordant with the discant, and vice versa. (Franco of Cologne, Ars Mensurabilis Musicae, chapter 11. Further extracts from this important treatise can be found in O. Strunk, Source Readings in Music History [New York, 1990], 139-159.)

This method of composition is very different from the classical music of the last few hundred years. If a choir sings a four-part hymn or anthem, for instance, all voices fill in a particular harmony. If one is missing, or breaks down, the effect on the composer’s intentions is probably fatal. But in medieval times polyphonic music was perceived as a number of layers. The composing process began with the tenor, then the discant or duplum, then the triplum, then the quadruplum—as many layers as circumstances required.

A composer (like Perotin) would feel quite at liberty to add another layer to pre-existing music, or to perform a piece with one of the upper layers missing. Such methods would produce truly appalling results if applied to classical music, but make good sense in the field of Western popular music today. In jazz especially, the “tenor,” in the form of popular song “standards,” is common property, to be surrounded by other musical lines depending on the occasion.

Like the motets, medieval songs in conductus style became fashionable outside the church as well as within, and courtly musicians used the idiom to create part-songs about the Crusades, about politics, and about love.

The Ordinary of the Mass

In the late thirteenth century, polyphonic settings during the celebration of Mass extended for the first time to the Ordinary, those unchanging texts which had at one time been opportunities for the expression of the faith of the whole Christian community. In well-endowed cathedrals and monasteries, the Ordinary texts were left more and more to the choir, who sang on behalf of those present (and perhaps even of those absent). It is a poignant irony that much of the outstanding Christian music of the Middle Ages, and the superb cathedrals that echoed to it, can be understood as monuments to the vaingloriousness of the church during this period.

The life of Guillaume de Machaut illustrated well the blend of secular and sacred that was common in this period. Born in about 1300, he took holy orders and was made a canon of Rheims and of St. Quentin, attached to the cathedral. He had also, from 1323, been secretary to John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, who had taken him on his military campaigns all over Europe before Machaut became canon. King John was killed at Crecy in 1346, and from that time Machaut was patronized by the Kings of France, Cyprus and Normandy, his fame as a poet and musician spreading throughout the European courts.

In spite of his holy orders and with a few notable exceptions, his creative energies were devoted to writing long, elegant, and sophisticated love-poems, some of which he set to music. Some of the love lyrics he wrote in his sixties were inspired by his relationship with a nineteen-year-old girl. The poetry of this “jolly and worldly ecclesiastic” was known and admired by a younger contemporary of his, Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400).

Apart from some motets with sacred texts, Machaut’s outstanding music for the church was his Messe de Notre Dame, a comprehensive setting of the Ordinary of the Mass for four voices. Settings of the Ordinary already existed by this time, but they seem to be compilations of pieces from various sources and not always complete. His setting is ornate and written with extreme care and great creative energy—it was probably created for some special occasion, though whether it was for Mass at the coronation of Charles V of France in 1364 is now disputed.

Machaut’s Mass is the first setting of the type that countless composers have written since, consisting of a Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus Agnus Dei and a final Ite, Missa Est. Machaut uses the composing techniques of both motet and conductus, moving from the music of intellectual sophistication and artistry (such as the Amen to the Credo) to a simpler style that suggests that he may have taken some heed of Pope John XXII’s bull of a few years earlier. As a monument to the Middle Ages’ expression of spiritual truth, it is outstanding.

The History of Music in Missionary and Independent African Churches

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Missionaries from Europe and North America brought to Africa many Western forms of music and worship. In the last several years, especially after Vatican II, Africans have developed more indigenous approaches to music in worship. The fascinating diversity of current musical practices is documented in this survey of independent African churches.

The Influence of Western Music in African Churches

The Christian ancestry of Ethiopia is unique in Africa, but in the last few decades, Christianity has blossomed in many other areas of the continent. Some African countries have a higher percentage of followers than the Western European nations that first evangelized them. Africa is a huge continent, and a survey of its Christian music here cannot even begin to be exhaustive. Through brief and selective views, therefore, the following chapters trace the steady climb that Christianity is making—away from Western trappings and dogma to a faith that expresses African priorities, fully absorbed into African life. The musical consequences of this change are dramatic.

It is comparatively recently (around 150 years ago) that Western missionaries became fired with the task of converting “pagan” Africa to the Christian faith: However anxious a missionary may be to appreciate and to retain indigenous social and moral values, in the case of religion he has to be ruthless … he has to admit and even to emphasise that the religion he teaches is opposed to the existing one and one has to cede to the other. (D. Westermann, Africa and Christianity [Oxford, 1937], 94)

The traditional religions have certainly ceded. In Kenya, estimates are that in 1900, 95.8 percent of the population adhered to traditional religions and only 0.2 percent were Christian. By 1962 the figures were respectively 37 percent and 54 percent: by 1972, 26.2 percent and 66.2 percent. Although these figures refer to one country, they reflect the general trend dramatically.

Western Lifestyle

Along with these changes in religious persuasion have come imported lifestyles which have found their natural habitat in the big cities. With them come all the trappings—good and bad—of Western lifestyle: the cars, the clothes, the fast food, the ghetto-blasters. It is in such surroundings that churches with a European style of worship are to be found in great diversity, with their Western liturgies, languages, and music.

But unlike Europe and North America, the majority of Africans still live in a rural setting, where traditions established over centuries, even millennia, continue to exert a powerful influence. In the cities an adapted Western culture has long been accepted and has replaced many local customs, but it is in village life that the collision of European Christianity and local customs is still an issue.

The place of music in these societies provides one indication of the cultural gulf to be bridged, for it plays a far more active part in the consciousness of Africans, penetrating deeply into traditional upbringing: The African mother sings to her child and introduces him to many aspects of music right from the cradle. She trains the child to become aware of rhythm and movement by rocking him to music, by singing to him in nonsense syllables imitative of drum rhythms. When he is old enough to sing, he sings with his mother and learns to imitate drum rhythms by rote.… Participation in children’s games and stories incorporating songs enables him to learn to sing in the style of his culture, just as he learns to speak its language. His experience, even at this early stage, is not confined to children’s songs, for African mothers often carry children on their backs to public ceremonies, rites and traditional dance arenas … sometimes the mothers even dance with their children on their backs. (J. H. Kwabena Nketia, The Music of Africa [London, 1982], 60)

Early missionaries seem to have been blind to these qualities of life and to the strong religious awareness of African peoples. As the nineteenth-century missionary Robert Moffat wrote: Satan has employed his agency with fatal success, in erasing every vestige of religious impression from the minds of the Bechuanas, Hottentots and Bushmen; leaving them without a single ray to guide them from the dark and dread futurity, or a single link to unite them with the skies. (E. W. Smith, African Ideas of God [London, 1961], 83)

Europeans believed that the minds of Africans were empty of any sense of religion or culture and were waiting to have these instilled into them. Desmond Tutu summarizes the result: These poor native pagans had to be clothed in Western clothes so that they could speak to the white man’s God, the only God, who was obviously unable to recognise them unless they were decently clad. These poor creatures must be made to sing the white man’s hymns hopelessly badly translated, they had to worship in the white man’s unemotional and individualistic way, they had to think and speak of God and all the wonderful Gospel truths in the white man’s well proven terms. (Desmond Tutu, “Whither African Theology?” in Christianity in Independent Africa, ed. by Fashole-Luke, Gray, et al. [London, 1978], 365)

Establishing trade with Africa was high on the European agenda in the nineteenth century and a prime reason for converting the continent to Western ways: In the Buxton expedition of 1841 … the first aim was to discover the possibilities of legitimate trade with Nigeria.… But the spreading of the Gospel was regarded as essential and integral to this. It was widely believed that, in order to have legitimate trade, one must have a people of developed culture, reliable and industrious habits.… Christianity was confidently regarded as the foundation for all of these and all the virtues of social and commercial intercourse.… (A. D. Galloway, “Missionary Impact on Africa,” in Nigeria [Independence Issue of Nigeria Magazine, Lagos, Nigeria, October 1960], 60)

The signs of a change of attitude among the missionary churches are evident in a hymnbook like Africa Praise, published in 1956 for use in English-speaking schools. It contains many of the best-loved Protestant hymns of the past two centuries, but also a large number of African songs to English words in tonic sol-fa (very few Africans have a musical training which allows them to read Western notation). The hymnbook is an indication of a desire to narrow the gap between the African and European cultures, but it was only a first step.

The Western Legacy

In a few city cathedrals, resources are channeled to the provision of printed books and to musicians who know how to get the best out of them; outside their walls, the music of the many churches founded by the West is in a sorry state. Without the provision of music books with stimulating contents of high quality and without the training to use such material, the Western legacy of Christian music has become a dead weight, even a millstone. Norman Warren described his experience of Christian music in Uganda after a visit in 1985: Generally speaking, we found the life of the church at a low ebb. All too common was the desire to ape the West.… I was disappointed in coming across so little original music in worship. In most instances the music was rather formal and old-fashioned …

He noted the use of Hymns Ancient and Modern (standard version) at Kampala Cathedral, Moody and Sankey in a suburban church in Kusoga, and African Praise at Arua Church in the north. The musical facilities available even in Mukono Cathedral were very slender: The organ is a pedal harmonium that has not worked for months. All the music was unaccompanied and led with great gusto by a small choir. The hymn tunes were, without exception, Victorian … and, quite frankly, I would never want to hear them again. (Music in Worship 33 [September/October 1985]: 6-7)

The Language of the People

The musical legacy of the missionary churches in Africa is not wholly depressing, however. The Roman Catholic church worldwide adopted a dramatic and new attitude to its liturgy in Vatican II (the Second Vatican Council) of 1962. The abandonment of Latin and the adoption of the language of the people was its most radical step.

A Coming-of-Age

Vatican II coincided with the independence of many African countries and a powerful awareness of national identity and heritage. The feelings of Catholic African bishops were summarized in a report in 1974: The “coming-of-age” of the Churches signifies a turning point in the history of the church of Africa. It is the end of the missionary period. This does not mean the end of evangelization. But it means, in the words of Pope Paul VI during his visit to Uganda: “You Africans may become missionaries to yourselves.” In other words, the remaining task of evangelization of Africa is primarily the responsibility of the African church itself. This fact implies a radically changed relationship between the church in Africa and … the other Churches in Europe and North America. (Report on the Experiences of the Church in the Work of Evangelism in Africa; the African Continent’s report for the 1974 Synod of Bishops on The Evangelization of the Modern World, 16)

One important consequence of this new attitude is the reduction of the numbers of missionaries from the traditional societies and churches working in Africa and alongside that, the development of new styles of worship more in harmony with African culture and lifestyle.

Church Music in the Independent Churches of Africa

Another development in the recent history of African Christianity is the pronounced and dramatic growth of indigenous independent churches. The Kimbanguist Church of Zaire is one of the hundreds founded as the result of the inability of the established missionary churches to understand African needs and aspirations in the faith. As a member of the Kimbanguist Church has written: The arrival of the missionaries, accompanied by colonisation, obscured the new knowledge of Christianity. The preaching of Christ was seen as another means of helping colonisation to alienate men completely from their African identity. It was in this situation that Christ turned his face towards his people and chose the prophet Simon Kimbangu as his messenger … (D. Ndofunsu, “The Role of Prayer in the Kimbanguit Church,” in Christianity in Independent Africa, ed. Fashole-Luke, Gray, et al. [London, 1978], 578)

Kimbanguist Music

In common with many indigenous churches in Africa, the Kimbanguists value the Bible and its teachings highly and their practices are founded on biblical principles. They also denounce the traditional animist religions with vigor but remain close to many local customs. Music is an important aid to worship, from the simple unison singing of the thrice-daily services of prayer through to the choral and instrumental sounds of Sunday worship and the colorful festivals of the church year. The beginning of the Kimbanguist musical traditions is indicative of the failure of the established missions in colonial times to understand the needs of the Christian community in Africa: At the start of the prophet’s mission at N’Kamba, the songs utilized to accomplish the work of Christ were those of Protestants. But the Protestants refused to sell their hymnbooks to the followers of the prophet. Saddened, Simon Kimbangu went apart to pray, laying before God this poverty, so deeply felt by his congregation. From that was born the gift of “catching” the songs. (D. Ndofunsu, “The Role of Prayer in the Kimbanguit Church,” 590)

The musical tradition that has developed is perfectly attuned to a society where it is memory rather than the written word that provides cultural identity and continuity: Kimbanguists catch songs in various ways: in dreams, and in visions in which they hear angels singing. As a general rule, once they have been caught, the songs are sent to an office set up by the church, called the Directorate of Kimbanguist Songs, where they are studied and to some extent modified to give them a good meaning. Other songs are deleted if the meaning of the song is not clear. The songs have to be examined to avoid those that may be inspired by the Devil. (D. Ndofunsu, “The Role of Prayer in the Kimbanguit Church,” 590)

The songs have all sorts of functions—some are songs of praise, others are “living lessons, explaining and clarifying biblical teaching, still others are prophetic.” After approval, these songs are learnt by a regional choir of leaders whose members then pass them on to the local choirs. One regional choir, the Kimbanguist Theatre Group, travels around the churches using singing and drama to bring Bible stories and the church’s history to life.

Aladura Churches

The Kimbanguist Church is only one of the hundreds of indigenous Christian organizations thriving in Africa today. Because there are no Europeans involved and little sign of Western culture, they can make an impact in areas hardly touched by the older missionary churches. The Aladura Churches, for instance, which are very popular among the Yoruba and Ibo people in southern Nigeria, have also become established in the Muslim north of that country. In political terms, these churches have generally been treated in a friendly manner by emerging nationalist governments, in contrast to the previously open suspicion toward colonial churches.

Among people of all walks of Nigerian life, the Aladura Churches are supported enthusiastically. Where the Kimbanguists are reminiscent of seventeenth-century Puritans in their restrictions on smoking, drinking, and dancing, the Aladura celebrate their faith with hand-clapping, dancing, and traditional instruments. They have incorporated other elements of traditional worship, too—instantaneous healing of the sick, raising of the dead, prophecy, and exorcism. As one Aladura Christian puts it, it is in their liturgy that “the unfulfilled emotional needs in the Western-oriented churches have found ample fulfillment” (A. Omoyajowo, “The Aldura Church in Nigeria Since Independence,” in Christianity in Independent Africa, ed. by Fashole-Luke, Gray, et al. [London, 1978], 110).

An indication of the popularity of the Aladura Churches in city and country is provided by their choirs’ and solo singers’ great following; an American-style network of gospel music is developing fast. The guitarist Patty Obassey is one of the best known, scoring an enormous success with Nne Galu in 1984. Among the many choirs who have produced a number of albums are Imole Ayo and the Christian Singers, the Choir of the Eternal Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim, and Erasmus Jenewari and his Gospel Bells.

The balance of European and African influences on the practice of Christianity is still on the move in favor of the African, but this does not mean a wholesale eradication of Western culture. The style of vestments worn by Aladura priests is only one element borrowed from the Protestant and Catholic Churches. On the other hand, the independent churches have taught the older mission churches valuable lessons in liturgy and Christian music.

Ecstatic Music

There are a growing number of indigenous churches where the style of worship is difficult to distinguish from the traditional animist religions. The African Apostolic Church, founded in 1932 by John Maranke, is an example. It is based in Eastern Zimbabwe but its influence has spread far and wide. Where the Kimbanguist Church approves and disseminates its songs in a highly organized manner, spontaneity and improvisation are the most striking elements of Apostolic worship.

The main meeting of the African Apostolic Church is held on Saturday—the Sabbath—and may last several hours. Worship begins with an invocation—kerek! kerek!—which is the name given to the ecstatic state the group will later experience. Then hymns are sung, which are formal not in the sense of being read out of a book, but by being commonplace among many churches in Africa:

Mwari Komborera Africa, Alleluia Chisua yemina matu yedu Mwari
Baba Jesu utukomborera Jesu, turi branda bako
Refrain: O mueya, boanna mueya utukomborera
In translation, this means:
God save Africa, Alleluia, Hear our prayers God, Father, Jesus, bless us
Jesus, we are your servants
Refrain: O come Holy Spirit, bless us

The words are in Chishona, a language reserved for religious ceremonies. The invocation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (the last is emphasized) is a sign to the people of a spiritual presence among them which is to become almost tangible.

The men are seated on the open ground separately from the women and all are addressed by preachers (there may be three or more) and the chief evangelist. Between them, they will have agreed beforehand on the biblical topics most appropriate for the day.

After the opening hymns the preaching begins, but members are free to interrupt with songs of their own choosing at any point. They are particularly likely to jump in and lead off with a song whenever the preacher hands it over to a reader. As in the Kimbanguist Church, instruments and dancing are not allowed, but their place is taken by the use of ngoma—vocal sounds which imitate drumming—and swaying while standing or sitting.

The call-and-response form so commonplace in African music demonstrates the relationship between a song leader and the rest of the congregation, who respond with their refrain even before the leader’s improvised verses have ended.

These songs exert a powerful emotional influence on the meeting and may very well develop into the repetitive chanting of a short refrain, such as “God in Heaven” (Mambo wa ku denga): During chanting, the rhythmic shape of the song is transformed as worshippers put increasing emphasis on strongly accented beats.… While the rhythm is accentuated, the harmonies of the chorus tighten. The loose collection of voices (of the call-and-response) becomes a tight, single unit. The overall effect is hypnotic. The rhythmic and harmonic ramifications push the singers into a state of maximum spiritual involvement. As the change proceeds, individuals moan, yodel, and insert ngoma … and glossolalic utterances (the gift of tongues). The entire congregation sways to the rhythm … (B. Jules Rosette, “Ecstatic Singing: Music and Social Integration in an African Church” in I. E. Jackson, ed., More than Drumming [London, 1985], 134)

It is sometimes difficult for the preacher to regain control of the service unless the chanting dies out naturally. If it does not, then he may attempt to break the spell by shouting a greeting. These songs are nevertheless regarded by the preachers as a valuable reinforcement of their message and the value of the meeting depends on the degree to which the members have experienced “possession” by the Holy Spirit.

The congregation’s sense of participation is absolute, even extending to the improvisation of songs expressing discontent—perhaps expressing disagreement with one of the church leaders or with the way in which a decision has been made. Even if problems are aired through song during the service, the sense of peace of unity after a long kerek is very evident.

The History of Music in the Coptic and Ethiopian Churches

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Millions of Christians who live in Egypt and Ethiopia have inherited a rich tradition of worship practices. Each of these churches maintains a variety of ancient worship customs, including the use of music. In Egypt, the congregation participates in the music of worship. The most striking feature of Ethiopian worship is the contribution of the priests, who spend up to several decades mastering the music, poetry, and dance that are used in worship.

The churches of the East can be divided into three groups: first, the Orthodox Churches of the four ancient patriarchs (Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem), together with the now independent churches still in communion with each other: Cyprus, Greece, Russia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Romania. Second are the Uniate Churches, in union with the church of Rome although following an Eastern rite. These owe their existence to Roman Catholic missionary work in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and are to be found in small numbers all over Eastern Europe and the Middle East, including the Melkite and Maronite Christians.

The third group of Churches is what the Orthodox church would call heretical. That is, they broke away from the Orthodox, mostly at the time of great doctrinal struggles in about the fifth century. These are the Nestorian church (the Church of East Syria) and the Monophysite Christians consisting of the Jacobite church of Antioch, the Armenian church, the Coptic church, and the Ethiopian church. These last two are particularly good illustrations of the wonderful riches in the Christian music of the area.

The Coptic Church

The words Egypt and Copt have the same basic root and refer to the geographical area around the Nile. The older form, Copt, has become attached to the language spoken in Egypt before Arabic became commonplace about six centuries ago. It is therefore a language that dates back, through the Bohairic dialect, to the ancient Egyptian period.

There may be as many as 7 million Coptic Christians in Egypt today, living in reasonable harmony among at least 40 million Muslims. Some Muslims are becoming more militant and look for an Islamic revolution as a reaction to the increasing poverty and hardship in the country. On the other hand, the Muslim and Christian communities in Egypt have lived in mutual cooperation for centuries and at present that seems set to continue.

Coptic Christians are keenly aware of their ancient ancestry. They revere the apostle Mark as the saint who established the Christian church in Alexandria before his martyrdom there in A.D. 68. They particularly treasure the story of Joseph and Mary’s flight to Egypt with the young Jesus. Many ancient Coptic churches were built to commemorate the various resting places of the Holy Family.

Egypt became one of the great centers of Christian monastic life from the fourth century onwards. Antony (about 251–356) is held to have been the first and finest example of a Christian following a world-renouncing life in the desert.

Many others followed. By the fifteenth century, there may have been as many as 300 monasteries and nunneries in Egypt. At present, there are seven, supporting some 300 monks.

When the Coptic church separated from the Orthodox in the schism of 451, its sense of spiritual and national identity was brought into a sharp focus that has never been lost. As a consequence, the traditions of worship have been less subject to change than in most other Eastern churches.

A visitor to a Coptic church today is immediately aware of being put in touch with very ancient customs which words can only attempt to describe: Perhaps nowhere in the world can you imagine yourself back in so remote an age as when you are in a Coptic church. You go into a strange dark building; at first the European needs an effort to realise that it is a church at all, it looks so different from our usual associations.… In a Coptic church you come into low dark spaces, a labyrinth of irregular openings. There is little light from the narrow windows. Dimly you see strange rich colours and tarnished gold, all mellowed by dirt.… Lamps sparkle in the gloom [and] before you is the exquisite carving, inlay and delicate patterns of the baikal (chancel) screen. All around you see, dusty and confused, wonderful pieces of wood carving. Behind the screen looms the curve of the apse; on the thick columns and along the walls … are inscriptions in exquisite lettering—Coptic and Arabic. (A. Fortesque, Lesser Eastern Churches [London, 1913], 288)

As with the Orthodox churches, the Divine Liturgy is central to Coptic worship—even services of baptism will end with Communion. The liturgy generally used is that of St. Basil the Great, the liturgies of St. Gregory of Nazianzus and St. Mark being reserved for special occasions. There is a dramatic shape to the service that is made very evident by the involvement of everyone present. Participation is practical, too.

As in the Orthodox church, music is an inseparable part of the liturgy and the whole service is sung from beginning to end—the music being not so much a way of worshipping, but worship itself. Unlike the Orthodox, however, the congregation is emotionally and vocally involved in the refrains of the litanies.

The pace of the liturgy can be very slow (depending on the priest) and the intonations have a hypnotic quality, using a very narrow range and intervals of a semitone or smaller. The responses are congregational and vocally strongly committed.

A choir, or schola, will lead the singing at large gatherings. Choirs are made up of theological students, for knowledge of the music is inseparable from the study of the liturgy. They accompany some chants with cymbal and triangle, a practice introduced during the Middle Ages and somewhat akin to the vocal drones of the Greek monks. The chanting is always in unison and the percussion instruments keep time with a fairly fast and syncopated beat. The Sanctus, an emotional high point in the Divine Liturgy, is much enhanced by this style of accompaniment.

This very ancient liturgical music is quite different from the popular music of modern Egypt, which is often played by Western instruments such as the electric guitar and synthesizer. It can also be something of an endurance test for the younger generation—but they still attend. In Sunday School, though, there is music of a more relaxed and folk-song style. Here the children and young people sing a different collection of Christian songs, some of which may be chants adapted from the liturgy. Instruments can be used that could never be brought into the church, such as violin, flute, piano and drums. As with much Middle Eastern folk music, the instruments decorate and play along with the vocal melody but do not provide additional lines or harmonies.

Since most Christians attend church three times a week, the liturgy and its music becomes very familiar and much treasured. It is at once one of the most ancient of all musical traditions but at the same time a vital and living force in Christian music, remarkable for its variety and richness.

The Ethiopian Church

The instruments of Musick made use of in their rites of Worship are little Drums, which they hang about their Necks, and beat with both their Hands; these are carried even by their Chief Men and by the gravest of their Ecclesiasticks. They have sticks likewise with which they strike the Ground, accompanying the blow with a motion of their whole Bodies. They begin their Consort (that is, music-making) by Stamping their Feet on the Ground, and playing gently on their Instruments, but when they have heated themselves by degrees, they leave off Drumming and fall to leaping, dancing, and clapping their Hands, at the same time straining their Voices to the utmost pitch, till at length they have no Regard either to the Tune, or the Pauses, and seem rather riotous, than a religious, Assembly. For this manner of Worship they cite the Psalm of David, “O clap your Hands, all ye Nations.” (Father J. Lobo, A Voyage to Abyssinia, trans. by Samuel Johnson [London, 1735])

So wrote a Jesuit priest, Jerome Lobo, in 1627. By any standards, Ethiopia is an inhospitable place to live. In the last ten years or so it has been beleaguered by catastrophic famine due to repeated failures of the rains, a disastrous locust plague in 1986, and a malaria epidemic in 1988. The government is constantly in conflict with groups fighting for their independence. It is not surprising that Ethiopia is described as “economically one of the least developed countries in the world.”

In spite of all this, it is a country of lively culture and strong spirituality, both of very long-standing. The story goes that the Ethiopians adopted the Christian faith in about A.D. 328 after the shipwreck of two Coptic Christians, Frumentius and Aedesius, on their shores. From this very early stage, they have maintained strong links with the Coptic church, siding with it in the Chalcedonian schism of 451.

The Ethiopian church also developed a desert monastic tradition from the fifth century onward. Many of the Ethiopian monks were highly educated and by the seventh century had translated the Bible from Syriac, Coptic, and Greek into the language of Ge’ez, which is still used in the Ethiopian church today. Like Coptic, this liturgical language is now quite different from the locally spoken Amharic language.

In its Christian history, Ethiopia has had very little contact with the West. Although it has been evangelized by Jesuits and more recently by Protestant missionaries, it is unique among African countries in having a Christian church which was established before the conversion of most of Europe. That church is strongly supported by at least 22 million members, divided among 20,000 parishes and led by about 250,000 priests! This represents nearly half the population, the rest being Muslims or members of traditional animist religions.

The statistics alone show support for the Christian faith unmatched by any European country. If the number of priests suggests that their title is a nominal one, then the intensity and thoroughness of their training tells a different story. As well as priests there are deacons, monks, and dabtaras. All of these have a knowledge of their Christian music, for it is bonded to the liturgy as closely as in other Eastern churches. To the dabtaras is given the responsibility of preserving the artistic traditions of church worship. After elementary schooling, a dabtara undergoes intense training in traditional music (zema), dance (aquaquam), poetry (qene) and perhaps in theology and church history, too. The task is a huge one and may take twenty years.

In music, the dabtara faces a rigorous study of the traditional hymns and anthems, of which there are many hundreds. The study is sufficiently intensive, for the dabtara must memorize them all. As part of this process he must make his own copy of the whole vast collection, manufacturing his own parchment and coloured inks, binding the books and making leather cases to preserve them. This task alone may take him seven years, during which time he must also practice the chant daily. Then the dabtara must study the sacred dances and how to accompany them.

The third study, ecclesiastical poetry, is by all accounts a highly sophisticated art, resembling (and probably surpassing) the most demanding of Western disciplines. The poems first and foremost have to be a perfect fit to one of the traditional chants, for they will be heard in worship as a commentary on Scripture. The poem has to be written in the ancient church language of Ge’ez and conform to strict rules of grammar. Most important of all, the poems use a host of scriptural symbols that the congregation understands very well. The poet is judged on how subtly and deftly he handles these symbols and all the technicalities of their expression.

Ethiopian Christians treasure their faith and its traditional expression. By this rigorous training, it is handed down accurately from generation to generation, but at the same time, there is room for creativity and a place for new work within its confines.

The reverence in which these traditions are held is delightfully illustrated by the legends which describe their origin. Ethiopian Orthodox Christians believe that all their sacred chant was created by Yared, a saint of the sixth century:

At this time, there were no rules for the famous zema, or liturgical chant. The offices were recited in a low voice. But when the Saviour wanted to establish sacred chant, he thought of Yared and sent three birds to him from the Garden of Eden, which spoke to him with the language of men, and carried him away to the heavenly Jerusalem, and there he learnt their chant from twenty-four heavenly priests.

Back on earth, Yared set to work composing and singing the sacred chants: And when the king and queen heard the sound of his voice they were moved with emotion and they spent the day in listening to him, as did the archbishop, the priests and the nobility of the kingdom. And he appointed the chants for each period of the year … for the Sundays and the festivals of the angels, prophets, martyrs and the just. He did this in three styles: in ge’ez, ‘ezl and araray; and he put into these three nothing far removed from the language of men and the songs of the birds and animals. (M. Powne, Ethiopian Music [Oxford, 1968], 91)

These stories are recorded in a fourteenth-century synaxarium (Lives of the Saints) called the Senkessar, but in reality, the chant is likely to be even older than the time of Yared. It is probable that some direct link exists with the temple music of Jerusalem.

This connection is reinforced by some remarkable circumstantial evidence. For instance, the characteristic shape of many of the churches is circular, and inside are three sections, one inside the other. The outer passage is open to anyone and is where the dabtara sings. The middle section is where the baptized take communion, but the innermost chamber is only for the priests; it houses the tabot, an altar very much like the ark of the covenant, made of wood and draped with a highly decorated cloth. Even the name of the innermost chamber (keddusa keddusan) is clearly connected to the Hebrew kodesh hakkodashim—the holy of holies.

The dance is of course the most striking link with the Old Testament: The veneration accorded to the tabot in Abyssinia [Ethiopia] up to the present day, its carriage in solemn procession accompanied by singing, dancing, beating of staffs or prayer-sticks, rattling of sistra and sounding of other musical instruments remind one most forcefully of the scene in 2 Samuel 6:5, 15, and 16, when David and the people dance round the ark. The entire spectacle, its substance and its atmosphere, has caused all who have witnessed it to feel transported into the times of the Old Testament. (Quoted in M. Powne, Ethiopian Music, 98–99.)