There is one genre of traditional music in America which, more than any other, is both widespread and healthy in the 1970's. That genre is folk hymnody. The cradle of the American folk hymn was Kentucky, which at the start of the nineteenth century witnessed a truly remarkable phenomenon we now call the Great Revival in the West. In 1800 and for a few years thereafter the western settlements experienced a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit, religious enthusiasm, or group hysteria--as various reporters have described it. A combination of factors including sparseness of population, difficulty of travel, and a dearth of large buildings called into existence a new context for Christian worship: the camp-meeting.

Very early, camp-meeting worshippers showed a preference for a particular type of song, then (as now) usually called a spiritual. This is because it isn't a psalm, and it isn't a hymn (technically, a hymn must praise God--which many spirituals never get around to doing). Happily, the New Testament had left the door open for pious effusions called "spiritual songs" (Colossians 3 :16).