The Daily Times

For Dr. Everett McCorvey, the founder and music director of the American Spiritual Ensemble, his connection to the American Negro spiritual and its association with the Civil Rights Movement goes far beyond this weekend’s Maryville College performance.

Yes, it’s an honor to lead a group in performance of music so closely intertwined to the story and culture of his ancestors. And yes, it’s even more special to do so on a weekend dedicated to the legacy of Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

But for McCorvey, the confluence of performance and timing come together in a way that’s unique to his own personal history.

“Dr. King lived around the corner from me when I was a child growing up in Montgomery, Ala.,” McCorvey told The Daily Times this week. “He was the pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, and the parsonage was around the corner from my house. Now, the King home is a national historic site.

“My father was a deacon at First Baptist Church where Ralph Abernathy was a minister. Many of the Southern Leadership Conference meetings, meetings related to the Selma march and the Montgomery bus boycott were held at that church. I did a lecture at a local college recently, and as I was going through pictures and showing different slideshows and different sides of the Movement, I found many photos taken at my dad’s church — where he’s still a deacon and still a member.

“That’s a part of my growing up, my heritage,” McCorvey added.

During that growing up, the American Negro spiritual was as much a part of his upbringing as the sacred hymns of the Baptist and Methodist traditions. The former, of course, was where his father worshipped; the latter denomination was the one preferred by his mother. But traditional Negro spirituals were heard in both houses of the Lord.

“They were such a strong part of the history — not only the history of the American Negro in this country, but the history of our country,” McCorvey said. “Of course, the spirituals were performed during slavery; they were sung and celebrated during the emancipation and the freeing of the slaves; and then they were front and center during the Civil Rights Movement. You heard the lyrics and the text from spirituals in many of Martin Luther King’s speeches.”

For the uninitiated, McCorvey and his group — 24 professional musicians who have sang around the world — go to great lengths to differentiate the Negro spiritual from other early forms of American music. In some circles, it’s mistakenly related to gospel music, but that’s not the case, McCorvey said. Spirituals were simple melodies for painful times — music developed out of field hollers, songs of praise, pleas for salvation and lamentations of agony, all sung by African Americans during slavery.

“This music has great meaning, not only throughout the African-American community but throughout the American community,” McCorvey said. “Really, it’s America’s first native music after the country was formed and the immigrants came over. I call it the ‘mother music,’ because it started the tradition, and it went from spirituals to blues to jazz to gospel to popular music. They’re the songs of the cotton fields — songs of anguish and pain and hope, and it helped form our American society.”

Growing up, McCorvey was exposed to these spirituals, but by high school, he was enamored with more contemporary forms of music. Born out of the tradition of jazz and blues players performing at juke joints on Saturday nights and in church services the next morning, the infusion of syncopation, rhythm and energy into traditional hymns gave birth to gospel, and like many young people, McCorvey gravitated toward the more spirited chords and rhythms.

But as he went into the world to earn an education and experience, McCorvey discovered something else about those spirituals — they were disappearing. He received a doctorate of musical arts from the University of Alabama and was in demand as a tenor soloist; currently a voice professor and director of opera at the University of Kentucky, he taught for two years at Knoxville College before moving to Lexington. And in his travels, he began to see the cultural dangers in allowing the Negro spiritual to become nothing more than a footnote in books about African-American history.

“As churches and high schools went more toward gospel music, the hymns and melodies were being lost, because they were not being sung and not being taught,” he said. “These spirituals are our history. They tell our story. That’s why I think it’s so important to keep these songs alive, and that’s the mission of this group. We look forward to celebrating this music for its historical significance as well as its emotional significance on this very important weekend.”

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