Transcribing spirituals destroyed their spontaneity, which was their power source.

Evidence

These attempts at documentation of the spirituals were translations, interpretations, advancements, and, crucially, proof of survival and a record of creativity. But the music just wasn’t the same, in part perhaps because the harrowing conditions that produced it had been abolished. And in part because the new versions were laced with something Hurston knew the music disliked: fuss. The original spirituals weren’t fussed over. Spontaneity was their power source. “Its truth dies under training like flowers under hot water,” Hurston surmised. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1098

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the ‘grafting’ and infrastructural-loss themes and the Deep Listening material on how codifying improvisation changes it. — connects to: Mass reproduction’s erosion of the aura destroys experience rooted in tradition. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 629
• SEED: Essay angle: preservation as a kind of violence — what every archival project destroys in the act of saving it.