TUPELO, Miss. (AP) - It’s often said that music is a universal language, and it’s true. Even when we don’t understand the words, music can speak to our emotions, often in ways words never could.
The Rev. Leon Anderson of Atlanta wants to remind his audiences that sometimes music - like the “Negro spirituals” of the slavery era in the American South - do speak to the emotions, but they also work just the opposite way: to send secret messages intended for only one group to understand.
The 70-year-old Anderson explained that the well-known spiritual “Wade In The Water,” for example, is an anthem to Christian baptism as well as a coded warning for would-be escaped slaves to quickly find their way to water to avoid detection by bloodhounds.
“It was so subtle the foremen and slave owners missed it,” Anderson said. “Dogs can’t track your scent in the water.”
Anderson, who lived in Mississippi for 12 years, has been traveling around the Magnolia State presenting his program - “An Anthology of the Negro Spiritual” - to do his part to keep the memory, and the layered meanings, of Negro spirituals alive. Standing six-foot-four with a sonorous baritone voice, he’s the perfect man for the job.
Anderson grew up in Allendale, in the rural Low Country of South Carolina and earned his bachelor’s degree in voice from the historically black Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, where he learned both the craft and the cultural value of Negro spirituals.
“Spirituals are fading from our collective memory, and if we don’t preserve them, they will be lost forever,” he said. “They were important during slavery, post-slavery and even during Reconstruction. Now we don’t sing these songs, but it’s urgent now that we are a merging society to keep this music alive.”
In performance, Anderson uses narration and a set of 25 songs to represent the varied aspects of slave life. He explained that since slave owners forbade the use of drumming or dancing, slaves sang a cappella, and musical accompaniment was a later addition.
A natural performer, Anderson said he credits Claflin University for instilling a sense of high expectation and a love for the craft of singing.
“I’m a choir man. I was a choir soloist at Claflin and I had directors who challenged me beyond words,” he said. “You had to learn the craft, not just sing haphazardly. And I was taught to enunciate every word clearly. The key is to get the music into people’s heads and hearts.”
Anderson said one of his choral highlights was a trip abroad with a choir in 1997.
“I went to England in ’97, the same week Princess Diana died. They shut the whole country down. I sang in London and in Salisbury Cathedral. I couldn’t believe the sound,” he said.
Looking back, Anderson said he was grateful for Claflin and other historically black colleges for helping bring blacks into the cultural and economic mainstream during the racially charged 1960s.
“Our black colleges have been our mainstay,” he said. “When we couldn’t go anywhere else they took us in. They taught us you have to be twice as good to be accepted, and that became a part of who we were.”
Anderson said that while social inequality is still alive and well, its roots have more to do with income than with race.
“It’s all about economics,” he said. “Racism is more economic than cultural. Poor whites get treated worse than the average black person.”
While he believes Negro spirituals need to be preserved as part of the cultural legacy, Anderson said the way forward as a culture must look past race.
“We need to come back to who God is, forget about black and white, and talk about who the Lord is together,” he said.
___
Information from: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, http://djournal.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.