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acabal committed Apr 25, 2022
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<p>There are many others of the Negro folksongs as striking and characteristic as these, as, for instance, the three strains in the third, eighth, and ninth chapters; and others I am sure could easily make a selection on more scientific principles. There are, too, songs that seem to be a step removed from the more primitive types: there is the maze-like medley, “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">Bright Sparkles</span>,” one phrase of which heads “<span epub:type="se:name.publication.essay">The Black Belt”</span>; the Easter carol, “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">Dust, Dust and Ashes</span>”; the dirge, “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">My Mother’s Took Her Flight and Gone Home</span>”; and that burst of melody hovering over “<span epub:type="se:name.publication.essay">The Passing of the Firstborn</span>”⁠—“<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">I Hope My Mother Will Be There in That Beautiful World on High</span>.”</p>
<p>These represent a third step in the development of the slave song, of which “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">You May Bury Me in the East</span>” is the first, and songs like “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">March On</span>” (Chapter <span epub:type="z3998:roman">VI</span>) and “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">Steal Away</span>” are the second. The first is African music, the second Afro-American, while the third is a blending of Negro music with the music heard in the foster land. The result is still distinctively Negro and the method of blending original, but the elements are both Negro and Caucasian. One might go further and find a fourth step in this development, where the songs of white America have been distinctively influenced by the slave songs or have incorporated whole phrases of Negro melody, as “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">Swanee River</span>” and “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">Old Black Joe</span>.” Side by side, too, with the growth has gone the debasements and imitations⁠—the Negro “minstrel” songs, many of the “gospel” hymns, and some of the contemporary “coon” songs⁠—a mass of music in which the novice may easily lose himself and never find the real Negro melodies.</p>
<p>In these songs, I have said, the slave spoke to the world. Such a message is naturally veiled and half articulate. Words and music have lost each other and new and cant phrases of a dimly understood theology have displaced the older sentiment. Once in a while we catch a strange word of an unknown tongue, as the “Mighty Myo,” which figures as a river of death; more often slight words or mere doggerel are joined to music of singular sweetness. Purely secular songs are few in number, partly because many of them were turned into hymns by a change of words, partly because the frolics were seldom heard by the stranger, and the music less often caught. Of nearly all the songs, however, the music is distinctly sorrowful. The ten master songs I have mentioned tell in word and music of trouble and exile, of strife and hiding; they grope toward some unseen power and sigh for rest in the End.</p>
<p>The words that are left to us are not without interest, and, cleared of evident dross, they conceal much of real poetry and meaning beneath conventional theology and unmeaning rhapsody. Like all primitive folk, the slave stood near to Nature’s heart. Life was a “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">Rough and Rolling Sea</span>.” like the brown Atlantic of the Sea Islands; the “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">Wilderness</span>” was the home of God, and the “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">Lonesome Valley</span>” led to the way of life. “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">Winter’ll Soon Be Over</span>,” was the picture of life and death to a tropical imagination. The sudden wild thunderstorms of the South awed and impressed the Negroes⁠—at times the rumbling seemed to them “mournful,” at times imperious:</p>
<p>The words that are left to us are not without interest, and, cleared of evident dross, they conceal much of real poetry and meaning beneath conventional theology and unmeaning rhapsody. Like all primitive folk, the slave stood near to Nature’s heart. Life was a “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">Rough and Rolling Sea</span>,” like the brown Atlantic of the Sea Islands; the “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">Wilderness</span>” was the home of God, and the “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">Lonesome Valley</span>” led to the way of life. “<span epub:type="se:name.music.song">Winter’ll Soon Be Over</span>,” was the picture of life and death to a tropical imagination. The sudden wild thunderstorms of the South awed and impressed the Negroes⁠—at times the rumbling seemed to them “mournful,” at times imperious:</p>
<blockquote epub:type="z3998:song">
<p>
<span>“My Lord calls me,</span>
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