African American Spirituals

Been In The Storm So Long

Performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers

Recorded 1956

The full version of this file is available on CD0100. This CD contains more than 34 hours of historical audio.

This negro spiritual offers religous testimony along with lightly veiled notes of protest. It sees life as a long storm through which one travels yearning for a little time to oneself (always in short supply to the slaves)--time for the peace of prayer and reflection upon deliverance into a just and quiscent, comforting realm of God. Such "escapist" songs offered slaves the consoling promise of a better world from which escape was a powerful motive.

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