Question about Gospel music roots, black and white

[Beringia]

I looked up that song "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" on youtube, because I remember liking it so much in that movie Night of the Hunter sung by Robert Mitchum. And I found out it was published in 1887 by Anthony Showalter, a white American gospel music composer. It was then covered by many other artists, including many black gospel singers and white gospel or country singers. I tried to find out more about gospel music and it seems that it came out of Black or Negro Spirituals from the slave days and was passed orally from person to person because slaves weren't allowed to write and Africa has oral tradition.

But then you have many white churches singing these songs.

So I wondered, did composers like Anthony Showalter in 1887 copy the black singers and their songs style. And how would he even learn that, certainly it wasn't taught in white schools how to make Negro Spiritual songs.

I have read a few online articles about this, but it doesn't explain the white connection.

Here is Robert Mitchum singing it.

Here is one of the articles I found about Negro Spirituals

http://spirituals-database.com/the-negro-spiritual/#sthash.KvhlEfqM.5gavOZQx.dpbs


What a fellowship, what a joy divine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
What a blessedness, what a peace is mine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.
Leaning, leaning,
Safe and secure from all alarms;
Leaning, leaning,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

[Docreed2003]

1. Spirituals and hymns are much like other songs in Americana

The roots and origins of the music often come from a "mixed background", if you will. During the late 1880's and early 1900's it was very common for white publishers to travel around regions and take down traditional songs and publish them. That was seen in country music traditions as well as blues and, yes, even spirituals and gospel music.

[Beringia]

2. Also I think a lot of the slaves

learned their songs from the slaveowners. I read that 2 white British hymn writers were popular among African Americans.


Hymnist and theologian Isaac Watts (1674-1748) and Charles Wesley (1707–1788) an English leader of the Methodist movement, most widely known for writing about 6,500 hymns



http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/timeline/collection/p15799coll9

[cemaphonic]

3. It's incredibly complicated, and so much of it is oral culture, thus hard to research definitely.

Slaves were encouraged, or required to adopt Christianity, where they would have learned the hymns of their local white congregations, many of which are still sung to this day. At the same time, they were composing their own material, of which many are also still well known. Then the minstrel show phenomenon came along, and some of the black spirituals found their way into those shows (and a few original minstrel show compositions found their way into the churches too) So even though there was some degree of musical segregation, the two musical traditions coexisted, and frequently cross-pollinated. And any popular enough song would eventually find its way to both congregations.

And yeah, there are some known cases and many suspected cases of a white publisher claiming authorship & copyright of songs by black musicians.

I don't know much about "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms' in particular (except that it's one of my faves too, and well-used and sung in NOTH), but the Wikipedia article suggests that Showalter learned in the shape-note singing tradition which was mostly a white (originally New England, but spread all over the South and Midwest) thing.

[Beringia]

4. Thanks so much, and what is NOTH, is that North?