{"id":6755,"date":"2022-10-11T00:09:59","date_gmt":"2022-10-11T05:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=6755"},"modified":"2022-10-11T00:09:59","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T05:09:59","slug":"sylvan-worship-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2022\/10\/11\/sylvan-worship-2\/","title":{"rendered":"“Sylvan Worship”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cSylvan Worship\u201d is an article written by <\/span>Chicago Inter-Ocean<\/span><\/i> writer William Eleroy Curtis, published September 18, 1875. The article outlines a description of a trip that Curtis took to witness a \u2018spiritual\u2019 in person. Overall, the article is rich with fetishistic language and othering behaviors, describing the events Curtis witnessed as a sort of foreign and outlandish ritual. Certain possibly offensive terms will be replaced with more modern and inclusive language in direct quotes, for the purpose of this blog.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t much information on who William Eleroy Curtis really was, but we do know for whom he wrote, the <\/span>Chicago Inter-Ocean<\/span><\/i>, and when he lived; Curtis was born in 1850, and passed in 1911. From the way that he writes, I assume that he was a white man, given he uses language that refers to African-American peoples as something that he is not. For example, take how he opens the article: \u201cNo race is more devotional than the African, and no class of people does the camp meeting revival prove so effectual as with them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

With this position in mind, I\u2019d like to look at the language he uses, and what the intent of writing this article may have been. The language used in the work is fetishistic, and while it offers high praise to the traditions that it highlights, it treats them as a sort of somewhat barbaric and foreign, indirectly invalidating the authenticity of the practices. Take, for example, this description of a spiritual: \u201c[Black] \u2018Spirituals\u2019 will forever exist among the curiosities of music, and at the camp-meeting the \u2018Spiritual\u2019 is seen in its strangest light and found in its most unadulterated flavor.\u201d The use of terms such as \u201c unadulterated flavor\u201d permeates this article in a way that doesn\u2019t really do it any favors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So what was it trying to do? I think that the article was written as either a curiosity piece, from the point of view of the white man, or as a sort of \u201cthey\u2019re not all bad!\u201d article, meant to highlight the good that black spiritual practices are doing. Like other earlier musicology works that we have covered, the frame of this article is one that does not paint black or minority musical practices in an equal and fair light. Either good natured or neutral, this work doesn\u2019t seem to bring deliberate harm, but it also isn\u2019t doing all that much good, the way that it is written.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“‘Sylvan Worship.’.” Weekly Louisianian, 18 Sept. 1875, p. 1. Readex: African American Newspapers, infoweb.newsbank.com\/apps\/readex\/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image\/v2%3A12B767D21CB17968%40EANAAA-12BEC31400554038%402406150-12BC002A0EA02018%400-12D621523A4D1068%40%2522Sylvan%2BWorship.%2522.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSylvan Worship\u201d is an article written by Chicago Inter-Ocean writer William Eleroy Curtis, published September 18, 1875. The article outlines a description of a trip that Curtis took to witness a \u2018spiritual\u2019 in person. Overall, the article is rich with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3347,"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-6755","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-1KX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6755","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\/3347"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6757,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6755\/revisions\/6757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}