Various: Angola Prison Spirituals

CD Angola.jpg

ANGOLA PRISON SPIRITUALS
It's one thing to enjoy old African-American spirituals when they're reworked for a rock audience by Cush, The Housemartins, et al. It's another to dig the genuine article, and Angola Prison Spirituals is as real about the deal as you're going to hear. Recorded in the late 1950s at a rural Louisiana prison and sung by men for whom Christ was literally their only hope (especially when they may have been in on trumped up charges in the South around the time Rosa Parks took her front row bus seat), this is possibly the last artifactual vestige of black U.S. Christian folk tradition. Gospel music was an entrenched commercial entity by then, and like praise & worship ditties today, it had begun to see congregational use. Gospel kept some of the narrative tone and passion, but Spirituals reveals a sublime level of rawness. Plenty of bassy baritones, some tenor lightness, choral singing, preaching . . . even a sermon and a murder ballad both turned into sanctified song make this an essential link on the chain of music that's hard, heavy and godly. [ARHOOLIE] JAMIE LEE RAKE

This album review was printed in ISSUE 104 of HM Magazine. To buy this issue, go to our online store and click on Back Issues.

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