TRANSCRIPT:
I’m Mark Rapp, and this is Rapp on Jazz.
From its beginnings, jazz has drawn deeply from African American spirituals—songs of sorrow, strength, and hope.
You can hear that lineage in some of the most powerful recordings in jazz history. Duke Ellington’s Come Sunday transformed a spiritual feeling into orchestral grace.
Mary Lou Williams brought sacred themes into her Black Christ of the Andes.
John Coltrane’s Spiritual and his later masterpiece A Love Supreme turned improvisation into prayer.
And Mahalia Jackson’s collaboration with Ellington at the Newport Jazz Festival showed how gospel and jazz could merge in transcendent harmony.
These works remind us that spirituals remain a living current, shaping its sound and spirit. At its heart, jazz carries the voice of a people seeking freedom and faith.
This has been Rapp on Jazz, a co-production of ColaJazz and South Carolina Public Radio, made possible by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.