During Slavery, African Americans created sang spirituals which is a type of religious music. Spirituals were the earliest form of religious music developed among African Americans. They sang negro spirituals as a form of resistance and used them to communicate. Slaves sang them with sorrow in hopes of being free . They had to deal with terrible conditions and singing was the one way they knew how to express how they felt in order to survive. Negro spirituals were like modern gospel. In most cases there is a leader/ chorus set up where some parts are sang by the leader and then the chorus follows.
Examples of Negro Spirituals were Wade In The Water and Free at Last.
Spirituals were originally an oral tradition that imparted Christian values while also describing the hardships of slavery. In today’s music, there is no other genre of music that is very much similar to old spirituals. Some people believe that gospel can somewhat be similar to a spiritual but I believe that they are very different.
