Jan 1, 1903
The songs are indeed the siftings of centuries; the music is far more ancient than the words, and in it we can trace here and there signs of development.
W.E.B. Du Bois
The Public Record
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, writer, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. He completed graduate work at Harvard University, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate. He was a professor at Atlanta University and over the course of his life wrote many books and articles. He spent the last years of his life in Ghana and died in Accra on August 27, 1963.
gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1903
They are the music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways.
Jan 1, 1903
But not all the past South, though it rose from the dead, can gainsay the heart-touching witness of these songs.
Jan 1, 1903
I know little of music and can say nothing in technical phrase, but I know something of men, and knowing them, I know that these songs are the articulate message of the slave to the world.
Jan 1, 1903
But the true Negro folk-song still lives in the hearts of those who have heard them truly sung and in the hearts of the Negro people.
Jan 1, 1903
They came to New York and Henry Ward Beecher dared to welcome them, even though the metropolitan dailies sneered at his “Nigger Minstrels.” So their songs conquered till they sang across the land and across the sea, before Queen and…
Jan 1, 1903
Then they went, fighting cold and starvation, shut out of hotels, and cheerfully sneered at, ever northward; and ever the magic of their song kept thrilling hearts, until a burst of applause in the Congregational Council at Oberlin…
Jan 1, 1903
But the world listened only half credulously until the Fisk Jubilee Singers sang the slave songs so deeply into the world’s heart that it can never wholly forget them again.
Jan 1, 1903
Their appearance was uncouth, their language funny, but their hearts were human and their singing stirred men with a mighty power.
Jan 1, 1903
Some, like “Near the lake where drooped the willow,” passed into current airs and their source was forgotten; others were caricatured on the “minstrel” stage and their memory died away.
Jan 1, 1903
It has been neglected, it has been, and is, half despised, and above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of…
Jan 1, 1903
And so by fateful chance the Negro folk-song—the rhythmic cry of the slave—stands to-day not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas.