Manual Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes

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Table of contents

• Why did this block occur?
• Sterling Brown: "Negro Folk Expression: Spirituals, Seculars, Ballads and Work Songs"
• “Key to the highway”: blues records and the great migration

Why did this block occur?

Like the nightingale, the performers seemed to love their own song, and to wait for its far off echo. Driven by interest in the exotic, and by sincere astonishment, these early impressions offer above all an idea of the emotions of the writer and observer. While they are by all means historically invaluable, these sources are at the same time not much more than fragmentary glimpses into the sounds of the past, biased by the social and political stance of the witness.

Let us also not forget that these records stem from observers who had no musical background, and who had no intention at all to register folk expressions. Their annotations on music were only a marginal byproduct of other larger observations. Furthermore, it has to be kept in mind that not all slave music was meant for white ears. In short: there exists, with regard to the history and nature of slave sounds, no trustworthy evidence that allows us to draw definitive conclusions Wilgus, , After the Civil War, the white fascination with black music grew in different forms and is credit to a better, yet incomplete view, on folk music among the African American population.

First of all, the popularity of the minstrelsy was consolidated. Nevertheless, minstrelsy helped to convince the white population of the supposedly innate musicality of the African Americans, and was in this respect a catalyst for a broader attention to this aspect of their culture.

It is thus no surprise that from the s, the historical fog on the sonic landscape began somewhat to clear. Then, on June 2nd — at that time, the Civil War continued its devastating and bloody course on the mainland — a young, handsome lady named Lucy McKim left New York, bound for the Sea Islands. She accompanied her father, James Miller McKim, a well-known abolitionist, as a secretary in his information mission on behalf of the Philadelphia Port Royal Relief Committee.

It is noteworthy that when she started her journey to the Sea Islands she had a decent musical background see also: Bosman, Such precise performance directions were never seen before. Whilst one part of the public applauded the minstrelsy which heralded nostalgia to the good old life on the plantation, and which depicted the African American as a lazy, simple-minded darky, the other part manifested, from a humanitarian stance, its deep appreciation for the unique contribution the Africans had made to the American culture. It is most telling, however, that the publications of the slave songs were far from a success; on the contrary.

Most music journals even ignored it. Nevertheless, Lucy McKim had kicked the ball. In August , H. Their performances met with an amazing national and international success, entertaining even European Kings and Queens. This imbalance has long supported the wrong assumption that the slave singing dominantly consisted of a religious repertory.

For the abolitionists, music making was not compatible with their view of an oppressed slave who was not expected to sing in the dehumanized state he was in. It is not the place here to discuss why in the post bellum decades the attention was primarily focused on the spirituals. It suffices to keep in mind that in the culture of the black population the distinction, in the European-Christian perspective, between the secular and sacred realm of life is not relevant.

In an African cultural perspective, both merge d into a spiritual perspective, albeit expressed in what Europeans define as an earthy vocabulary. Anyhow, the documentary legacy, skewed by this false dichotomy, bears a strong emphasis on the religious song. Nevertheless, some attention has been paid to secular music.

Sterling Brown: "Negro Folk Expression: Spirituals, Seculars, Ballads and Work Songs"

In , David C. Four years later , George W. Cable wrote, in the same magazine, about the black dancing at the Congo Place, and about the Creole slave songs in New Orleans D. Wilgus, It is safe to say that when other songs than spirituals started attraction attention from ethnographers, the development of the black music performed in secular surroundings was already very well advanced.

The belated attention for secular music will forever handicap our potential for understanding the early black music. Was this the prototype of the African-American blues player?

1. When I Am Laid In Earth.
2. Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes by Howard W. Odum - Book - Read Online.
3. Odum, Howard Washington | NCpedia!
4. For Truth Justice and Liberty.

The Greek born, but international writer best known for his books on Japan, Lafacadio Hearn , settled in America in , and would during his residence of nearly a decade in New Orleans offer us some additional impressions of an early folk blues tradition. In his vast number of writings in numerous national publications he helped to establish the reputation of New Orleans as a city with a very specific culture.

Wright, Hearn was in close contact too with Henry Edward Krehbiel to whom he provided some first-hand material from his conversations with African Americans living in New Orleans. In , Hearn conceived the idea of a book on black music co-written with Krehbiel. The book, unfortunately, never saw the light.

Like Krehbiel, Hearn was firmly convinced of the African roots of the black music. His theories on this matter, however, need to be seen against the contemporaneous ideas which sought physiological explanations for the African-American characteristics. For instance, the longer vibrations, which he thought to be peculiar in black folk music, were in his opinion probably rooted in the differently formed vocal chords of the African-Americans,…. The foundation, in , of the American Folklore Society was a sign of the growing scholarly interest in the study and promotion of traditional culture.

The African-American tradition, however, did in no way receive the attention comparable to the efforts invested in for instance the survey of the native Indian folk lore. The numbers speak for themselves: between and some It is telling that the use of the phonograph for ethnographic purposes pioneered in with the recording of Indian songs M. Hamilton, His opinion is unequivocal 60 :. Moreover, it is a remarkable fact that one author has frequently copied his praise of negro-songs from another, and determined from it the great capabilities of the blacks, when a closer examination would have revealed the fact that they were not musical songs at all, but merely simple poems.

In short, Wallaschek saw no necessity whatsoever to study the African-American songs because they were either indirectly inspired by the whites, or sometimes just plain copies of white folk music.

The neglect by Wallaschek of the African-American song contrasted sharply with the fascination felt by Charles Peabody when he was excavating in May and June of and Native American burial grounds of the Choctaw people in Coahoma County, Northern Mississippi. Though archeology was his concern, the songs he heard performing by his hired African-American workers grabbed him.

Some five years later, in his early twenties, a young student of classics at the University of Mississippi by the name of Howard Odum took up his cylinder recorder when he embarked in his survey of the folk songs and traditions of southern blacks living in nearby communities. The phonograph could deliver an impartial testimony of what the blacks themselves were singing, which was clearly different from what choirs and sheet music publishers brought.

Consistent with the revolutionary approach of the anthropologist Franz Boas, who was by the way also one of the teachers of Zora Neale Hurston, Odum felt it an absolute requirement to record exactly, with high technological means and following scientific criteria, the words and sounds of the people under study.

“Key to the highway”: blues records and the great migration

If we are to believe Hamilton , Howard Odum was the first to register African American voices on cylinder, but no traces of the cylinders have later been found. Around , working at the Hampton Institute, Virginia, a college established in to educate former slaves, the born Natalie Curtis , one of a small group of women doing ethnological work in Northern America, broadened her research to include the transcription and collection of African American music.

Up till then, she had concentrated, as most, on the study of the traditional music of Native American tribes. The war has driven home to us this truth: we no longer tolerate the presence of the black race, and with anxiety at that — we need the Negro, and he is here to stay. For him, there were clearly no African survivals in the slave songs. He made his point as clear as Wallaschek had a decade before, when he wrote:. They use them on all occasions. Like all peoples of low culture, the negroes accompany their manual labors with song. The efficiency of these songs is so well recognized that the owners of the plantations pay extra wages to singers capable of leading the chorus of laborers.

These songs, however, have no distinctive character; they are religious hymns. The same holds true of the songs sung by negroes for their diversion, when at rest in their cabins, in the family circle or for the dance. Such a use need not surprise us when we have seen their religious meetings degenerate into disheveled dances under the influence of the same songs.

It is the hymn which must sanctify the dance. Carefully do they guard it against any admixture of the profane element. A superstitious dread in this regard is another convincing proof of how completely they have forgotten their African origin. The existing material was, as described above, relatively scarce, confusing and open to different, even radically opposing interpretations. It was moreover tainted with major shortcomings with regard to reliability. The question of authenticity of the material was and is substantial. What was the discrepancy between the transcriptions and the reality? Not only the potential of the observer to understand and frame the sounds he heard was limited; it was furthermore highly unlikely that he had heard it all.

Inconspicuously, white racist stereotypes had crept in the transcriptions of the early African-American folk music. But, first, who was this man? Horowitz, He was patriarchal, but embodied also kindness and courtesy. He was an imposing, elegantly dressed figure, and he was nothing less than a genius.