What Is African American Sacred Music?
African American sacred music encompasses everything from 19th-century concert spirituals to modern praise and worship songs in genres from the blues to hip-hop. African Americans with no formal ties to a church or congregation are still familiar with certain canonical works that influence all facets of the culture. From slave spirituals to old hymns to modern hip-hop Praise songs, African American sacred music is used to practice devotion, offer comfort, teach virtue, recall history and doctrine, and celebrate special days.
Why is it important?
In Africa, music had been central to people's lives; music making permeated important life events and daily activities. This continued in their descendants as they made new lives and traditions in the United Sates. African American Sacred Music crosses standard lines between the sacred and the secular. Beyond its place in worship, spirituals, gospel songs, and hymns have permeated a many facets of African American culture including government and social structures. Poetry, praise, power, protest, philosophy, and politics are all major themes within African American sacred and secular music. The music that their ancestors used as a tool of protest and a comfort against slavery has been moved to other stages, becoming motivation and inspiration.African American Sacred Music has functioned as a platform for equality on multiple fronts. Spirituals played a major role in buoying the spirits of protesters during the Civil Rights Era. The songs served as a rallying cry to those who were demonstrating against laws and policies that kept African Americans from having equal rights. African American sacred and secular music has also been a support of Black Feminism. African American women were common as composers, arrangers, and performers, and many were as renown, if not more so, than their male counterparts.
African American music, both sacred and secular, has influenced popular culture in many forms. African American choirs were a mainstay in early Hollywood films and the music of spirituals and gospel can be directly linked to the evolution of popular musical forms, including the blues, jazz, rock, and hip-hop.
About this Exhibit
This exhibit showcases the role Sacred Music plays in the cultural institutions of the African American communities of Los Angeles, as well as the ways in which those traditions have impacted the politics, social structures, and history of African Americans in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas.The exhibit is made up of materials from the African Diaspora Sacred Music and Musicians (ADSMM) program and the Georgia & Nolan Payton Archive of Sacred Music. The Payton archive consists of music, books, periodicals, documents, audio & visual materials, posters, and photographs. The collections were donated to the CSUDH Gerth Archives and Special Collections by Dr. Hansonia Caldwell, emeritus professor at CSUDH, and Sallyanne Payton, one of the founders of the ADSMM and the Payton Archive. Both Caldwell and Payton are longtime supporters of the Gerth Archives and sponsors of this exhibit.
The primary goal of these collection is to facilitate research and documentation of collections of African Diaspora sacred music created and/or performed by the multicultural population of Southern California. The materials in the collections are available for research in the CSUDH Gerth Archives and Special Collections.