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Meet the Author - Nikki Giovanni Poetry – More Information – Talk about the Book
“ ’What I love about the hip-hop generation is what I’ve loved about my enslaved ancestors: They found a way to stay sane, and they said, ‘I’m not going to let you stop me.’ “ – Nikki Giovanni
On My Journey Now: Looking at African-American History Through the Spirituals
by Nikki Giovanni
Candlewick Press, 2007, 128 pages.
ISBN-10: 0763628859.
ISBN-13: 978-0763628857.
Imagine standing on the deck of a ship, tired and frightened. You’re about to step ashore into a strange land and an uncertain future that you know will be as harrowing as the voyage.
Poet Nikki Giovanni often imagines herself as one of the women who stepped off the first slave ships that brought Africans to America. And she imagines that music is what helped them endure the terror and the pain.
In her book, On My Journey Now, Giovanni traces the entwined history of African-Americans and their seminal music, spirituals, from the slave ships to the present. It is ground that others have covered, but not in the way Giovanni does. Who else has dared suggest that spirituals are proof the enslaved African-Americans took pride in their work, or that rap music and spirituals have much in common?
On My Journey Now is not only thought-provoking, it’s a fun read and a working manual of the spirituals of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The complete lyrics of almost 50 spirituals are grouped together in an appendix, followed by a list of Giovanni’s favorite recordings of spirituals.
The name of the book was taken from the lyrics of the spiritual, On My Journey, Mount Zion:
“On my journey, Mount Zion/
Well, I wouldn’t take nothing, Mount Zion,/
For my journey now, Mount Zion.’’
The book covers the gamut of spirituals, from “”Go Down, Moses’’ and “”This Little Light of Mine,’’ to more obscure selections such as “Scandalized My Name.’’ The subject matter of many of the songs is Christianity, but the enslaved Africans were singing long before they were introduced to the Bible, Giovanni points out. She believes spirituals began on the slave ships as music that has come to be known as “moans,” to comfort and calm each other.
The lyrics of the spirituals are the history of African-Americans. The music celebrates “…their choice to overcome the tragedy of enslavement …,” Giovanni writes in her introduction. They are “ the songs of a people who chose to live.”
Spirituals served many purposes, she says. On plantations, some of the spirtuals were work songs that helped establish a rhythm, proof that the enslaved Africans were proud of the quality of their work, however coerced. Some spirituals helped keep alive the African culture and folkways because slaves were not allowed to read or write. Others were songs of hope, of a day when they were out of slavery, either on earth or in heaven:
“One of these mornings bright and fair,/
Way in the kingdom,/
Going to hitch on my wings and take to the air,/
Way in the kingdom.”/
In the late 1700s, spirituals began to reflect the Bible stories, such as Go Down Moses and Joshua fit the battle of Jericho. But secular subjects still were not only popular but useful. The enslaved used spirituals as a way to talk back to their masters, who didn’t realize when a song was about them. Less subtle were the songs of outright defiance — “No more auction block for me.’’ Spirituals even were used to help the enslaved escape to freedom. “Follow the Drinking Gourd” is an example of a spiritual encoded with directions.
Spirituals eventually fell out of and then back in favor, but have never ceased to be relevant. Today, they’re more relevant than ever, says Giovanni, who calls herself a futurist.
“These people, these enslaved Africans, are the key, because they are the only people who have been in an unknown place without landmarks who found a way to stay human and sane,” she writes. “…When we go to Mars, when we go to Jupiter, when we go to the Dark Star, somebody is going to have to sing a song.”
DelMio Exclusive! Q&A with Nikki Giovanni
