Black gospel music is a genre of African-American Christian music that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries alongside ragtime, blues, and jazz. The sound tradition is rooted in the conversion of African slaves to Christianity, both during and after the trans-atlantic slave trade, which transformed musical stylings, with hymnology and their on-going search for freedom to create a new musical tradition, starting with work songs sung in the fields and, later, with religious songs sung in various church gatherings, later classified as Negro Spirituals, which shaped much of traditional Black gospel.