CHAPTER 4 | THE MUSIC OF BLACK WORSHIP 103
polyrhythmic texture and suggest how American slaves, denied the percussion
instruments that had played such a central role in their African musical heri-
tage, found ways to transform and perpetuate that heritage despite the priva-
tions of bondage.CAMP-MEETING HYMNS
The identity of black Americans as a group separate from white Americans was
taken for granted until well into the twentieth century. Racial prejudice, fed by
incomprehension, distrust, and fear, defi ned blacks, socially and legally, as a cat-
egory of people with no chance of admission into white society. One result was
that social activities in which whites and blacks engaged as partners were few
and far between. As settlement pushed westward, however, a religious institu-
tion took shape that proved more hospitable than most white forums to blacks
and their habits of expression: the camp meeting, described in chapter 3.
Although camp meetings were usually organized by Methodist and Baptist
preachers who were ready to seek out “the plain folk” wherever they happened
to live, the meetings were interdenominational and never part of any church’s
offi cial program of worship. They caught on quickly: a leading Methodist of the
day calculated that as many as four hundred camp meetings were held in 1811
alone.
The camp meeting set religion above race and welcomed black partici-
pants. Even in slave states, blacks took part, though generally on their own
“shouting-ground,” where religious meetings were held after the sermon. But
while the camp meeting’s egalitarianism is generally applauded today, it drew
sharp criticism in its own time. In 1819 a tract appeared called Methodist Error,
written by the “Wesleyan Methodist” John F. Watson, denouncing camp-meeting
hymns. The music, he wrote, consisted of “merry airs, adapted from old songs,
to hymns [i.e., hymn texts] of our composing.” The religious enthusiasm these
hymns kindled was no excuse for
their shortcomings: “Often miser-
able as poetry,” they were equally
“senseless as matter.” As for the
merry airs, they were “most fre-
quently composed and fi rst sung by
the illiterate blacks of the society,”
proof of their worthlessness.
The traits Watson singles out
for attack are African: the reliance
on oral transmission, the physical
movement, and the responsorial
repetitions, choruses, and “short
scraps” of tunes. His critique indi-
cates that the camp meeting, rather
than establishing a particular kind
of hymn singing and holding black
worshipers to it, allowed them free-
dom to praise God as they saw fi t—
with spiritual and ring shout.John F. Watson on Black Worship at Camp
Meetings (1819)I
n the blacks’ quarter [of the camp meeting], the coloured
people get together, and sing for hours together, short scraps
of disjointed affi rmation, pledges, or prayers, lengthened out
with long repetitious choruses. These are all sung in the merry
chorus-manner of the southern harvest fi eld, or husking-frolic
method, of the slave blacks; and also very like the Indian dances.
With every word so sung, they have a sinking of one or [the]
other leg of the body alternately, producing an audible sound
of the feet at every step, and as manifest as the steps of actual
negro dancing in Virginia, &c.... What in the name of religion
can countenance or tolerate such gross perversions of true
religion!In their own words
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