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The terms spiritual and gospel are sometimes used interchangeably to represent any religious music developed in the African-American tradition. The technical distinction between the two is that spirituals are the anonymous religious songs developed during the period of American slavery, whereas gospel melodies represent composed music, the greatest flowering of which started in the early 1930s with the hundreds of compositions of Chicago choir director Thomas A. Dorsey. As music which is both anonymous and which is disseminated in oral tradition, spirituals fit in the category of pure folk music. The black spirituals represent perhaps the greatest body of pure folk art in our musical heritage.

This month's featured product review is on The Spirituals: Their Story, Their Song by Dave Marshall (MB99420BCD). This book contains 60 spirituals, each presented with melody, lyrics, chord grids, and an intermediate-level fingerstyle guitar arrangement. The solo guitar arrangements are presented in both tablature and staff notation. A CD of the guitar arrangements is provided with the book, all for a price of $22.95.

In addition to the music, the author gives us a really thorough brief history of this music, including information on the slave trade, the history of the spirituals, the Civil War, song forms in spirituals, early publication of these works, and the story of how this music has found its way into other styles of music including pop, blues, jazz, country, and gospel. What's more, the author's love for and lifelong interest in this music is obvious to the reader.

The first African slaves were brought to the American colonies around 1620. With them they brought their own cultural traditions of music, dance, language, instruments, and worship. The earliest slaves worked the tobacco farms of Virginia. During this time, Virginia farmers also used white indentured servants. Sadly for the African slaves, their work was not on an indentured basis. Rather, it was a lifelong sentence of hard work and frequent cruel treatment.

I have always found it amazingly hypocritical that our early leaders who prided themselves in their Christian beliefs found a way to justify the practice of chattel slavery. To their apparent satisfaction this dilemma was comfortably rationalized in the early 1700s during the period in our history known as The First Great Awakening. During this time religious leaders and slave owners got together and decided that even though the slaves didn't qualify as being completely human, they were however human enough to deserve religious training in Christianity. Because of its promise of a better life after this one, Christianity had great appeal to the slaves. Independent black churches were being formed as early as the late 1700s.

It was cotton production in the South that caused the slave population to increase dramatically in the early 1800s. Between 1810 and 1850 the number of slaves in the United States increased from 1.2 to 3.2 million. By the time of the Civil War, cotton production accounted for two-thirds of U.S. foreign trade.

The spirituals are a music born of unthinkable hardship and oppression and contain messages of earthly woes, the troubles of life and slavery, and a tremendous sense of hope. Some contain hidden messages about escape from slavery. "Follow the Drinking Gourd" is certainly the most famous in this category. The "drinking gourd" represents the constellation we call the Big Dipper. As reflected in the book's cover design, the end two stars of this constellation point to the North Star, the direction representing freedom to the slaves.

In early performance practice, spirituals were usually sung by a small group supporting a leader and were performed with no instrumental accompaniment. African-based traditions such as lining out, call and response, and vocal sliding were common. Many of these songs have become so familiar that most people aren't aware of their origins in slavery. "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" was NOT written by The Kingston Trio but is in fact a spiritual! Spirituals such as "Down by the Riverside," "When the Saints Go Marching In," and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" have become standard fare and are performed and enjoyed by musicians ranging from bluegrass to country to pop.

The earliest publication of the spirituals was called Slave Songs of the United States and was published in 1867. The collection and publication of these great songs gave them an aura of academic legitimacy and there have since been many publications of the spirituals. Also in the late 1800s, the extensive touring of the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University in Nashville brought this beautiful music to many thousands of people, both here and abroad.

This edition clearly shows author Dave Marshall's passion for these songs. In his arrangements the author relies largely on keys which work well on the guitar such as D, A, E, G, and Am. Many of the arrangements feature the sixth string tuned down to D. The arrangements are fairly short, usually ranging from 8-24 measures in length. We do not see a lot of theme and variation style here, just a nice clear presentation of the basics. The pieces lie nicely on the fingerboard and for the most part should be accessible to the intermediate-level guitarist possessing good basic barre chord, scale, slur, and RH picking skills.

The arrangements would sound equally good on either acoustic or classical guitar. Mr. Marshall has done a good job of using an appropriate accompaniment style suiting the tempo, mood, and text of each piece. Slow, somber pieces such as "Deep River" and "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" are likely to use a simple chordal accompaniment whereas more syncopated and lively spirituals like "Rock-a My Soul" and "Do Lord" tend to be presented over an alternating bass. Fingering help is provided but is not excessive so the score looks clean and uncluttered.

The recording which accompanies this book shows clear, clean playing and should be of help if the player has questions of tempo or rhythmic inflection. Mr. Marshall squeezed a lot of music (60 songs) onto this one CD!

I see this book as being useful to anyone who loves this body of work and wants to deepen his or her knowledge of it. The teacher could use this book in a variety of ways-teaching melody, teaching chords, singing, or of course teaching the fingerstyle arrangements provided. The advanced player could use these arrangements as a basis for more complex arrangements by adding arpeggios, altering chords, etc.to create their own variations. Many of these pieces would be perfect for the gigging guitarist to have under his or her fingers. As you know, the Bach Chaconne might put people to sleep, but tear into "Kumbaya" or "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" and you will soon have a sing along on your hands.

The spirituals have long been some of my very favorite American roots music and we are now lucky to have this fine edition, The Spirituals: Their Story, Their Song, with which we can celebrate and enjoy this great body of work. I found this to be a beautifully realized book.