The art of music, Vol. 04 (of 14) : $b Music in America
History
The art of music, Vol. 04 (of 14) : $b Music in America
Music -- History and criticism; Musicians
[66] H. E. Krehbiel, _op. cit._
[67] In the collection entitled 'Jubilee and Plantation Songs' (Oliver
Ditson, 1887) the melody only is given. Mr. Krehbiel gives two
harmonizations, but it is a question whether they are satisfactory
reproductions of the 'native' spirit of the song. Mr. Henry F. Gilbert
has used it in his 'Negro Rhapsody' with most telling effect.
[68] For an example of a pentatonic melody we refer the reader to
'Nobody Knows de Trouble I've Seen'; for the major seventh in a minor
key (the use of the augmented second) to the 'Baptizing Hymn' ('Freely
Go') and 'Father Abraham' ('Tell It'). This peculiar oriental effect
may be, as Mr. Krehbiel thinks, due to a feeling that was natural to
the Moors, the Mohammedan negroes who made up a small part of the
American colored stock. A specimen of a song in the whole-tone scale
is 'O Rock Me, Julie,' in which the refrain is each time a fifth lower
than the verse.
[69] 'Slave Songs in the United States.'
[70] James Augustus Grant in 'A Walk Across Africa' says that his
people when cleaning rice were always followed by singers who
accompanied the workers with clapping of hands and stamping of feet.
'Whenever companies of negroes were working together in the cotton
fields and tobacco factories, on the levees and steamboats or sugar
plantations and chiefly in the fervor of religious gatherings, these
melodies sprang into life.' (Booker T. Washington, in preface to
Coleridge-Taylor's 'Twenty-four Negro Melodies.')
[71] Remnants of voodooism have survived in Louisiana to our day.
The language of the creole negro is a French _patois_. In his songs
this _patois_ is sometimes intermingled with strange words of African
origin. Some still have an African refrain, though the negroes no
longer understand its meaning. Lafcadio Hearn, upon asking the meaning
of the words of one of these songs of a negro woman in Louisiana,
received the answer: _Mais c'est Voudoo, ça; je n'en sais rien!_ With
the help of philological references Hearn actually traced the words to
Africa and made sense out of them in connection with their context.
[72] 'Century Magazine,' Aug., 1899.
[73] Mr. Allen says that the shout is not found in North Carolina and
Virginia, though Mr. Krehbiel knows of an example from Kentucky. Mr.
Allen says, however, that the term 'shouting' is used in Virginia in
reference to a peculiar motion of the body wholly unlike the Carolina
shouting.
[74] _La Musique ches les peuples indigènes de l'Amérique du Nord._
[75] _Musik, Tanz und Dichtung bei den Kreolen Amerikas._
[76] George W. Cable in 'Century Magazine.'
[77] White had a long and successful career as a minstrel and manager.
Extracts from his diary were printed in the New York _Sun_, April 20,
1902, shortly after his death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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