The R. Nathaniel Dett Reader

Individual articles from this issue of Black Sacred Music are available for purchase at read.dukeupress.edu/black-sacred-music.

This volume comprises the complete writings of musician and scholar Robert Nathaniel Dett on the subject of African American sacred music. As these essays demonstrate, Dett remains one of the leading authorities on the subject of the black spiritual. In addition to collecting and writing on black religious folk song, Dett employed the spiritual as thematic material in his sophisticated choral compositions. Dett created an original and distinctly American music which, along with similar compositions by his contemporaries, represents a substantial segment of African American liturgical music.