Religious Songs

Religious songs played an important role in the formation of slave music and in the origins of the blues. Most slaves were not allowed to attend official church worship services. The few that did either attended the churches of their masters and sat in special slave pews, worshipped in their own churches supervised by whites and with a white minister, or in rare cases, had their own black congregations led by black preachers (but still supervised by whites).

These all-black congregations were almost without exception Baptist churches, but these all but disappeared following the Denmark Vesey insurrection in 1822. This, however, did not stop slaves from holding worship services, called by historians "the invisible church," which existed throughout the period despite stringent attempts to keep it down. Slaves evaded detection in any number of ways, but generally tried to meet in remote areas of the plantation or in deep thickets called "brush arbors," a fact represented well in the lyrics of the following slave song:

I sought my Lord in de wilderness, In de wilderness, in de wilderness; I sought my Lord in de wilderness, For I'm a-going home.

As I went down in de valley to pray, Studying about dat good old way, When you shall wear de starry crown, Good Lord, show me de way.

O mourner, let's go down Let's go down, let's go down, O mourner, let's go down Down in de valley to pray.

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