Negro spirituals are a body of religious folk songs created and sung by enslaved African Americans, drawing on Christian scripture and imagery, particularly stories of deliverance such as the Exodus narrative, alongside musical elements, including call-and-response structure, rhythmic complexity and vocal styles, rooted in West African musical traditions carried and transformed under slavery. Spirituals were created and transmitted orally within enslaved communities rather than through written composition or notation, sung during work, worship and gathering, and scholars have documented that many spirituals carried layered meaning, expressing explicit Christian religious content while simultaneously encoding, for listeners attuned to the reference, messages of coded resistance, hope for freedom, and, in some documented cases, practical information related to escape, a dual character that distinguishes spirituals sharply from later, more purely devotional gospel music composed after emancipation.
The songs were performed communally rather than by a designated soloist for an audience, typically without instrumental accompaniment in their original context, relying on voice, rhythm, and often physical movement such as the ring shout, a shuffling circular movement of enslaved worship communities, understood by participants as itself a form of worship rather than mere accompaniment to singing.