Music and Global Politics

Spotlight on Charleston: Spirituals, Slavery, Gospel and Gullah

In this episode of "Music and Politics" we shine a light on Charleston, SC, a city in the Deep South once the largest and richest in Colonial America. Seen from this perspective, the history of America and its musics looks very different: at once dominated by the tyranny of slavery and also much more African. As a centre of Gullah culture, Charleston saw efforts to preserve the spiritual song of slavery and to construct stage art, from a play to an opera, based on the Black Experience. Gullah refers to, an American Creole, a language and a culture that preserved West African traditions, from music to cuisine to handicrafts like nowhere else in the country. In the first half of this episode we examine the meaning and form of the "Spiritual," a text of resistance and communication, denied the use of percussion. We interrogate the particularly perverse project of the descendants of slave owners to preserve and even perform spirituals themselves. In the second half of this episode we share a medley from this past summer's Gospel Gullah Fest and reflect on Gospel as a retrenchment of the sacred, as a response to secular and often erotic popular music. Both speak a similar language of love and ecstasy reflecting the complex layers and multidimensional tradition of America's most propounding and rich musical heritage.