NANM Sings Spirituals (NANM, Inc. 2006)

The National Association of Negro Musicians, Inc.
NANM Sings Spirituals
NANM, Inc. 2006
www.nanm.org/products.htm

In the introduction to NANM Sings Spirituals, Roland Carter, immediate past president of the ninety year-old National Association of Negro Musicians, explains that the purpose of the NANM is the “preservation and cultivation of African American music, with an emphasis on the spiritual.”

The concept behind NANM Sings Spirituals, as proposed by NANM members Maxine O’Keefe (Detroit) and Samuel Walker (Altadena, CA), was to capture the orally transmitted, communal, singing of spirituals in the folk tradition, “unarranged – ‘in the raw’.” Thus was it done at the NANM’s 2003 and 2005 conventions in Los Angeles and St. Louis, respectively. Said Carter of these rarely heard interpretations of the spiritual canon, “The songs were allowed to be what they are, and the performances to become whatever they became…singing until we thought it was just right, or at least until it felt right.”

NANM Sings Spirituals is a recording of, or an eavesdropping onto, the traditional, acappella performances of thirteen spirituals at the 2003 and 2005 conventions. Most of the spirituals are introduced by a solo voice, with participants falling into place thereafter. Unlike formal arrangements of spirituals and more in keeping with techniques of gospel music, the performances allow for spontaneous interjections, vocal improvisation and hand clapping. Each performance is extemporaneous and as individual as a fingerprint.

The NANM singers are most enthusiastic when rendering “I Ain’t Goingt’ Study War No More” (aka “Down by the Riverside”). One can almost sense the joy bubbling over in the hearts of the singers as they give this spiritual a hearty send-up. “Hail, Hail, Hail” is given a Sacred Harp treatment, sans the fa-so-la warmup. The slow and mournful “Lord I Want to be a Christian” sounds akin to a Doctor Watts line-hymn, and echoes the Tuskegee Institute Singers’ version, recorded for Victor in 1914 as “I Want to be Like Jesus.”

NANM Sings Spirituals is a brilliant idea well executed, and a superb introduction to the spirituals as a sacred folk expression stripped bare of European music contrivances. I hope to sound as powerful as the NANM when I make ninety.

The project was sponsored by the NANM and the Georgia and Nolan Payton Foundation. Special thanks to Sam Edwards of Stanford University for passing this project along.

Four of Four Stars