Coming up this time honored Rock's music is a foundational pillar of the black church in Louisiana.

We'll meet a group that is striving to keep the old spirituals alive and inspired.

That's this time on our Web.

May Art Rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you.

Hello.

Welcome to a special edition of Art Rocks.

With me, James Fox Smith of Country Roads magazine.

This week's show will dive deeply into the inextricable relationship between music and the black church.

Many African-Americans have long considered the church to be at the heart of their communities.

From the time of slavery through to today, generations of families have remained close to their churches for many reasons.

One of them is the music.

The spiritual and gospel standards that have long been a source of solace and inspiration to the church communities that keep the music's flame burning brightly.

Clarence Jones is director of the world renowned Heritage Choir in Baton Rouge.

Jones has studied, played and taught music for more than half a century, sharing the history and the meaning behind the music as well as the songs themselves.

This history and the lyrics and harmonies with which it's told is inspirational stuff.

So settle back while Mr. Jones tells his story.

You're in for a moving experience.

Well, Israel was an interpreter.

The one to my people go so oppressed so hard they could not stand left.

My people go, go, go down.

All those years were on their knees up line, travel over Rome, let my people go.

And most of these songs took up stories from the Bible.

But the Pharaoh was the slave owner during that period of time.

The whole thing was a yearning for freedom being kept in bondage.

My children are being taken from me.

They're being sold off.

These are the kinds of things that that the songs talked about on the back of the back of the very the back of the back of the Jericho.

I go back to the Jackie O, back to John Brown Diary to the back to the back of Jericho Dodge from the back of the back of Jericho.

John Jerry, I feel about the book, about John Paul on the back of John back you the back of Jericho John In the back of the back of the Jericho.

John Kennedy You've got to get out.

So there's not good.

Oh, Joshua, what about the longevity of John outside back of John back in time with John was one of that.

These were authentic songs of the slaves back in the early part of the 1900s, John W work was at Fisk University, went around different parts of the country, for the most part in the Mississippi Delta.

He was able to sit in and listen, and he was a musician, so he was able to write the music out.

He was able to collect more than 6000 songs that were spirituals created by the slaves.

The spiritual was really the only authentic folk music that was created in this country in that second enslavement.

If you read the one music in the play, you have to read from the bridge.

Writers say, if you read nine times in the play, there's no other country that has anything like the Negro spirituals.

The first Jubilee Singers organized by George White, they were able to travel across the country and even into Europe, and they raised all kinds of money singing Negro spirituals to support Fisk University, the spiritual.

It's not like classical music.

If you didn't back Brahms or Beethoven, then one of the classical musicians, they had certain rules of composition that they had to follow.

Depending upon the period that they were in, the slave could not read or write.

There were no rules.

And you will find in black society this existed in a number of things that we do.

This this thing called Improvization.

Your mother could not read a recipe, but she learned to just put that thing together.

And it might have been different and a little way here, a little joy there.

But that Improvization was the mother of a number of different music idioms.

The first idiom was the spiritual boy.

What she wrote with Jesus on the table 200 The two words You steal away, steal away to Jesus still over, Steal your way home heart ain't got to load to stay here.

Music is essential to our Sunday morning services.

It sets the mood for the ministry and brings the word around.

I said no doing slavery.

Our people weren't able to bring a practice that religions from Africa, they weren't allowed to speak their own language.

They weren't allowed to play their drums as they had played in Africa.

And many of the things that they did in Africa they were forbidden to do.

However, our people understood that certainly that was a higher being.

Now they were allowed sometimes to sit in the back or in the balcony of certain churches, and they were able to hear the word and understood that that was preaching of the gospel that related to that higher being.

And they understood that they needed to relate to that in the drudgery that they had endured in their daily life of slavery.

They started to sing these songs.

They were work songs.

The message songs that was that newspaper also died.

The spirit Times.

Yes.

Every time I hear this, they will bring it back and look on value as well.

It is always with a smile, though.

Every time I the issues have.

That's how they put it was to all of you.

And I've been score all oh, I've been built and I've been scorned.

Sir.

Ran Oh I've been duped and I've been score.

Oh and all I've been.

What about shows.

Ball.

Oh.

Service from all over this world.

There is trouble all over this world.

Sir Elton.

Run.

Is all over this world.

Oh, the world is from all over.

The world is small.

Comes back with age.

Go play my legend Da Oh, and hey, it's gonna lay my legend down.

Shall draw I'm all right It's gonna lay my legend The da own head Go by the legend Don the whole thing was about I've been duped And there's trouble all over this world.

But the ending message was in spite of all of that and all that, my legend down the spiritual dead, a large number of things to take care of the needs of the slaves.

We talk about what it does in the church today, and that even more in the slave life.

Sometime it was giving messages about what they needed to pass along in terms of cold from day to day, and the man and oh, well, you know, you're very straight and the same.

Don't you get me such a position.

Don't you get really doesn't make me go from this swing.

Oh sweet.

I we all coming far to carry me home.

Swing low, switch high.

Reward Corbin for encouraging me.

Oh, if you get there before I do.

Coming for you.

Carry me home.

Tell all my friends I'm coming.

Corbin for to carry me home.

Swing low, Switch high.

We all coming for to you.

Carry me home.

Swing low.

Oh, sweet try.

We ought calling for 200.

Oh, the spiritual was the psychiatrist.

Sometimes they needed the relief of saying.

That's a better day, a coming.

Hallelujah.

And it was a message of hope.

And how can I get through this day to get to tomorrow and whatever's coming at me tomorrow, how can I sustain myself?

The Indians said this is a good day to die.

The black man says, How can I make it through this situation today and exist for tomorrow?

And once I leave this place, how can I go home to live with Jesus?

When I was a kid, folk were saying these testimonial songs when no one was playing.

Those songs had more meaning and more lasting qualities about them because they are about their relationship with God.

My grandmother, a testimonial song, was Let Jesus fix It for you.

She knows just what to do whenever, pray, let him have his way and he will fix it for you.

You know, that kind of that kind of old school, You know, when when we have the groups saying, I'll have them do maybe shine on me, shine on me, let's From the lighthouse.

Yeah, My from my son.

They show a song on me All shine on me, shine on me.

That's night from the light Oh, shy, hard on me.

That kind of thing.

Gospel music.

It's a moving element.

During the fifties, there was a man called Joe Mayes, and I think he did something like this.

I believe in that old time religion, this big swing going on right with the Lord.

I live from that old time religion that my mother received long ago, that kind of thing.

And then, of course, it changed.

It went through a number of different artists during the years, lots of all kinds of things you can do with gospel music.

But however, today it's taking another turn.

Of course, that's Kirk Franklin.

Then he started adding some elements into it that were different from what was traditional.

And then that grab a hold.

And of course, you have some artists now who do a different kind of thing, and it's almost like love songs that are making love with God, with Jesus.

Some people don't care for even the old contemporary gospel.

It's about what does the word say?

What message is it delivering?

And does it does it go from heart to heart and at the same time relate to a genuine connection to the father of the world?

Does it tell the story of the meaning of Christ?

Does it relate home?

Does it testify about one's faith?

And if it does not do those things, then it it's it's in the wrong place.

Oh, I see that brokenness.

Right on the singing.

We saw people, you know, live.

They be living, you know, there is a difference between what is sacred and what is secular.

And some of them are crossing the line between being sacred and secular.

And so you have to discriminate in what you do.

And I find that some some music is more fitted for the concert stage than it is for a religious service because the one's going to relate to God and the other is just going to relate to one's emotions.

And that emotion may not be a spiritual emotion person.

Me, not all gentle, say savior, hear my ball cry, and why another star won't call.

They do not pass me by.

I'm calling you Savior.

In a moment, we'll have more on the Heritage Choir itself.

But first, Louisiana is awash in opportunities to get to grips with the arts.

Here are a few coming your way in the weeks to come.

That's just a taste.

For more.

Pick up a copy of Country Roads magazine or online.

You can also watch or rewatch any episode of Art Rocks any time.

So just visit LP B Dawgs Hot Rocks back to the Heritage Choir.

The men and women who belong to this choir all live in Baton Rouge.

Some of them have received special training, but most hone their craft in church choirs, school choirs, and in the communities that surround and support them.

Choir director Clarence Jones has been a high school music teacher, a school principal and director of church choirs for close to six decades.

He tells us more about how his choir came into existence in 1976.

I started the group and I called it Heritage.

I realized that gospel music, of course, is very, very powerful.

Oh yeah.

Oh, my.

I loved gospel music and not putting it down at all.

But you cannot forget where you came from if you don't understand where all of this stuff started from.

You don't know where you're going.

I felt like this was the only thing that our people had to share with us.

They didn't have a lot of land, didn't have a lot of money.

Many of the artifacts that we treasure, they did not have to pass us.

But the soul, the things that brought them through the faith, their religion, these were the things that they left for us.

I've traveled Orlando, Palm Beach, Huntsville, and outside of the country.

I took them to Mexico City, to the Mexican destination Choral Festival, went to the American church in Paris.

We sang at the Vatican for Pope John Paul.

Many times we invited to sing for festivals and outside performance.

But being an a cappella group most suited to sing in church groups.

Sometimes I do think some play for them, but this group was organized to preserve and restore the singing of the Negro spiritual and oh so about so you.

That'll do it for this edition of Art Rocks.

But as always, there are more shows to explore.

An LP dot org slash rocks.

And if you can't get enough culture.

Country Roads magazine makes a great resource for finding out what's going on in arts and events and in all destinations all over the state.

So until next week, I've been James Fox Smith and thanks to you for watching.

Art Rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you.