{"id":5327,"date":"2021-10-02T15:16:07","date_gmt":"2021-10-02T20:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=5327"},"modified":"2021-10-02T15:16:07","modified_gmt":"2021-10-02T20:16:07","slug":"the-role-of-christian-music-in-cultural-cleansing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2021\/10\/02\/the-role-of-christian-music-in-cultural-cleansing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Role of Christian Music in Cultural Cleansing"},"content":{"rendered":"

In class we have been studying how missionaries and colonizers brought English music, specifically sacred music, to the \u201cNew World\u201d. The colonizers installed missionary schools to teach Native Americans how to sing hymns and psalmody. Christian music was also taught to African slaves.<\/span><\/p>\n

These topics and histories led me to question the role music played in colonization and slavery. What was the purpose of teaching Christian music to non-Christians?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Gregorian Chant- Their Introduction Among the Negroes <\/span><\/i>has helped me investigate this question and opened a door to a wealth of sources that depict the various ways Christian music has been weaponized as a tool of indoctrination.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Published in the Charleston Gospel Messenger and Protestant Episcopal Register on the 20th of May, 1844, <\/span>The Gregorian Chant- Their Introduction Among the Negroes<\/span><\/i> gives modern scholars an insight into the purpose behind this practice, and the reason why a magazine article would deem this article relevant to its readers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This literature also stands as testament to the historical trend of American Christians weaponizing religious music to dominate, disenfranchise, and uproot the cultures of non-Christians of color.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The correspondence was written by a church musician who taught African slaves Gregorian chant on a plantation in the South, claiming that learning this music will be to their benefit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe benefits of all this to the negroes you will appreciate without my pointing them out. To learn so much, at once of Scripture and of the Church service; to learn it in a way to imprint it indelibly on their memories, and to have it ever at hand for their instruction, warning, comfort, and devotional use\u2026\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gregorian Chant, which is taught orally and sung in unison,\u00a0 is said to give comfort and purpose to those who learn it, according to the people who were deeply involved in the business of slavery and proselytization.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is very little literature confirming this that was not written for and by slavers and clergymen at the time; and it is likely that these \u2018benefits\u2019 were greatly exaggerated, as Gregorian chant also served to familiarize \u201cnew Christians\u201d with scripture, which they learned and potentially memorized through active participation in worship service in the form of collective singing.\u00a0 What the article provides is, in fact, a \u2018helpful guide\u2019 to the Gregorian chant as a reliable method of forced assimilation: most writings about the subject focus on the practicality of teaching Gregorian chant to slaves as a gateway into re-culturing those who they deemed uncultured.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The author cites its singular ability to be taught to those who are \u201cunacquainted with music\u201d, blatantly contradicting his own assessment that \u201cthe religious songs which they [enslaved Africans] are now accustomed to\u201d were, in fact, music.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an eerily similar fashion to the missionary schools put in place to erase Native Americans through cultural as well as ethnic cleansing; the magazine writers seem more invested in diminishing these individuals\u2019 cultural identities, as an entire new mechanism of exerting control, than in \u2018gifting them salvation\u2019. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Citations<\/p>\n

THE GREGORIAN CHANTS–THEIR INTRODUCTION AMONG THE NEGROES. (1844, 05).\u00a0Charleston Gospel Messenger and Protestant Episcopal Register (1842-1853),\u00a0<\/i>21<\/i>, 45. Retrieved from https:\/\/www.proquest.com\/magazines\/gregorian-chants-their-introduction-among-negroes\/docview\/125266391\/se-2?accountid=351<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In class we have been studying how missionaries and colonizers brought English music, specifically sacred music, to the \u201cNew World\u201d. The colonizers installed missionary schools to teach Native Americans how to sing hymns and psalmody. Christian music was also taught … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jEhR-1nV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5328,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5327\/revisions\/5328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}