Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes

by Howard W. Odum

Excerpt from Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes
Likewise peoples have lived contemporaneously side by side, but ignorant of the treasures of folk-gems that lay hidden and wasting all about them. The heart and soul of the real people are unknown, science is deprived of a needed contribution, and the world is hindered in its effort to discover the full significance of the psychological, religious, social and political history of mankind. That which is distinctly the product of racial life and development deserves a better fate than to be blown away with changing environment, and not even remain to enrich the soil from which it sprang. Justice to the race and the scientific spirit demand the preservation of all interesting and valuable additions to the knowledge of folk-life. The successful study of the common development of the human intellect in primitive thought is thus advanced. The exact form of expression itself constitutes a contribution to knowledge and literature.
The value and importance of folk-lore are gladly recognized. Its successful study and a more comprehensive recognition of its worth have revealed new problems and new phases of thought. Not only its relation to civilization as an historical science and as it bears definitely upon peoples of modern cultural areas is recognized, but its essential value in the study of psychological, anthropological, and sociological conditions has called forth the most careful study that has been possible to give it. On the scientist's part, knowledge has been increased, while on the other hand, the peoples of the world have become more united in the appreciation of the kindred development of human thought. The vast contributions to folk-science and their relation to scientific interest, bear testimony to this truth. And perhaps even more with folk-song, a greater work is to be done. As a part of folklore it represents less of the traditional and more of the spontaneous. Its collection and study is now being pursued with more zeal and with marked success. And the hope may well be expressed that with the growing interest in folk-song may come an increased knowledge of all that is nearest and truest to the phyletie as well as the genetic concept of a people, and that with this knowledge may come effective efforts toward race adjustment and new aids in the solution of race problems.
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Genres: Music

107 pages, Paperback

First published March 13, 2012

About the author

Howard Washington Odum

1884-1954

Reviews

[Susan Molloy]

This is a fascinating work that deconstructs and analyzes the history, lineage, form, and evolution of the music of the Southern Negro.

Ther are some interesting points to ponder:

The negro found satisfaction in singing not only at church but perhaps even more while he performed his daily tasks. Those who heard the old slaves sing will never forget the scenes that accompanied the songs. After the lighter songs and brisk melodies of the day were over the negroes turned toward eventide to more weird and plaintive notes. The impressions of such singing have been expressed: “Then the melancholy that tinges every negro’s soul would begin to assert itself in dreamy, sad and plaintive airs, and in words that described the most sorrowful pictures of slave life—the parting of loved ones, the separation of mother and child or husband and wife, or the death of those whom the heart cherishes. As he drove his lumbering ox-cart homeward, sitting listlessly upon the heavy tongue behind the patient brutes, the creaking wheels and rough-hewn yokes exhibiting perhaps his own rude handiwork, the negro slave rarely failed to sing his song of longing.

The spirituals current among the Southern negroes to-day are very much like those that were sung three or four decades ago. The differences may be seen in the comparisons that follow in the examples given: There are more rhymed words in the present-day negro song than there was in the earlier ones; consequently, there is often less meaning in a line or stanza. The tendency seems to be more toward satisfactory sound impression than for spontaneous feeling expression as in the older spirituals. Meaning and words in general are often sacrificed in the effort to make rhyme, to make the song fit into a desired tune, to bring about a satisfying rhythm, or to give prominent place to a single well-sounding word or phrase.

Thus, the negro’s religion is dependent upon feeling; song facilitates and intensifies the feelings, and song is the essential joy of much of the negro’s life. Whenever and wherever occasion demands religious manifestation, the song is the prerequisite. Not only at the church, but at lodge celebrations, funerals and memorial services, the song begins the process of “putting a feelin’” in the congregation.

🖋️Published July 1909.

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