"Sho Nuff Gospel Music:" The Backbone of the Black Church in America.

Motherland Media Network

W. E. B. Du Bois in his seminal work The Souls of Black Folk concludes with an essay on the richness and perseverance of gospel music. The sorrow songs, as he calls them, are not only the "most beautiful expression of human experience born this side of the seas," but Du Bois also contends that spirituals are the only distinctly "American music" form. These songs are not mere words set to music, but they are poetry, folklore, history, theology, celebration, sorrow, and soul. These spirituals, like the people who created them, are "African…Afro-American… Negro…Negro and Caucasian." The "sorrow songs," as Du Bois describes them, are a microcosm of the achievements of African descendants in America; songs, which, like their composers, have been refined by the fires of American slavery, injustice, and oppression. These songs are the "music of an unhappy people," and the creations of "children of disappointment;" and yet, they are also prayers which breathe hope and "a faith in the ultimate justice of things." The cultural expressions of black folks that Du Bois describes in the spirituals, reflect a secondary, but highly significant, definition of the word "soul," namely, those emotions of community and cohesion that thrive in the often unexamined corners of black life. The Black Reality Think and our special guest, Rev. Michael Rogers will discuss and share the music that the great W.E.B. Dubois called "the sorrow songs."