among them, according to my estimation, are certain of the so-called plantations melodies and slave songs, all of which are distinguished by unusual and subtle harmonies, the thing which I have found in no other songs but those of Scotland and Ireland.'" 19 "Krehbiel, op. cit., p. 153. CHAPTER 43 MODERN NEGRO MUSIC; NEGRO DANCES Negro Music Since the Civil War-Negro Composers and Vocal Artists-The Jubilee Singers-The Famous "Blind Tom" and Other InstrumentalistsRagtime and Jazz-The African Dance and Its Modification in AmericaBlending of the Dance with Religious Exercises SINCE the Civil War the Negro has done very little in the way of composition of popular songs. The Negro Year Book for 1924 gives a list of a dozen or so of Negro composers of songs, but none of them occupy a high rank. J. Rosamond Johnson, a native of Florida, was educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, and has composed a number of songs with distinct Negro characteristics. Several of his pieces were sung by May Irwin, Lillian Russell and Anna Held. Many Negroes have sung well. Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield of Mississippi was educated in Philadelphia, and, because of her fine voice, attracted attention as a concert singer both in America and England and was widely known as "The Black Swan." Madame Marie Selika of Chicago has appeared before cultivated audiences in cities of the United States and also in Paris and Berlin. The Paris Figaro and the Berlin Tageblatt paid high tributes to her vocal genius. Hamilton Hodges of Boston, Flora Batson of Providence, and half a dozen other Negroes have won respectable recognition as vocal artists. Numerous Negro glee clubs have attained to wide popularity, and among these the Fisk Jubilee Singers deserves special praise. J. B. Marsh, in his story of the Jubilee Singers, states that: "They were at times without money to buy needed clothing; yet in three years they returned, bringing back with them nearly one hundred thousand dollars. They had been turned away from hotels and driven out of railway waiting rooms, because of their color; but they had been received with honor by the President of the United States; they had sung their slave songs before the Queen of Great Britain, and they had gathered as invited guests about the breakfast table of her Prime Minister. Their success was as remarkable as their mission was unique. Altogether these singers by their seven years of work raised one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and secured for their institution school books, paintings, and apparatus to the value of seven or eight thousand more. They sang in the United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Switzerland, and Germany. Since their time they have been much imitated, but hardly equalled, and never surpassed." 1 In the line of instrumental music the Negroes have produced several men of genius of whom the most celebrated was Thomas Bethure, known as "Blind Tom," born a slave near Columbus, Georgia, in 1849. At an early age he was noted as a musical prodigy. He could immediately reproduce on the piano any piece of music he had heard. He traveled for years and gave concerts in all of the great cities of America and Europe. Joseph Henry Douglass, grandson of Frederick Douglass, and now instructor of music in Howard University, is a well known violin soloist, as is also Clarence White of Boston. There have been many Negro arrangers of band music and, though few of them have attained to fame, they have displayed much originality in combining various instruments, and in introducing novel elements of rhythm. Altogether they have undoubtedly had a decided influence upon the musical taste and development of the American people. It is commonly believed that both ragtime, and jazz music, which has become so widely popular, had their origin among the Negro bands of New Orleans and other towns of the lower Mississippi. The native African, with his highly developed sense of rhythm, has a passionate fondness for dancing, and the music of his dances has the characteristic rhythm of his folk songs. Except the war dances, nearly all other African dances are described as orgies of sensuality. In transplanting itself to America the African dance has preserved much of its lasciviousness, especially in regions dominated by Spanish and French culture. The celebrated and fascinating Spanish Habanera, which originated in Havana, is said to have been a Negro product upon which graceful melodies were imposed. In Louisiana, the Antilles, and Spanish America the Roman Catholic church exercised a restrictive and reformative influence upon the Negro dances, and in Anglo-Saxon America the Negro dances were suppressed by the Protestant churches, especially the Methodist and Baptist denominations, at least to the extent of eliminating the sensuous element. Lafcadio Hearn described a dance he witnessed in New Orleans in 'Quoted by Brawley, Short History of the American Negro, p. 326. "Krehbiel, Afro-American Folk Songs, p. 114. which the Negroes "danced the Congo, and sang a purely African song to the accompaniment of a drygoods box beaten with a stick or bones, and a drum made by stretching a skin over a flour barrel. As for the dance-in which the women do not take their feet off the ground-it is as lascivious as is possible. The men dance very differently, like savages leaping in the air." 3 The tendency of the various religious denominations in America to discountenance and prohibit the native African dance caused the plantation darkies to introduce into their religious exercises some of the elements of the African dance. The Negro "shouts," so celebrated in the Lower South in the slave days, were generally accompanied by dancing, as the following description will illustrate: "The true 'shout' takes place on Sundays, or on 'praise nights,' through the week, and either in the praise-house or in some cabin in which a regular religious meeting has been held. Very likely more than half the population of a plantation is gathered together. Let it be the evening, and a light-wood fire burns red before the door of the house and on the hearth. For some time one can hear, though at a good distance, the vociferous exhortation or prayer of the presiding elder or of the brother who has a gift that way and is not 'on the back seat'a phrase the interpretation of which is 'under the censure of the church. authorities for bad behavior'-and at regular intervals one hears the elder 'deaconing' a hymnbook hymn, which is sung two lines at a time and whose wailing cadences, borne on the night air, are indescribably melancholy. "But the benches are pushed back to the wall when the formal meeting is over, and old and young, men and women, sprucely dressed young men, grotesquely half-clad field hands-the women generally with gay handkerchiefs twisted about their heads and with short skirts-boys with tattered shirts and men's trousers, young girls bare-footed, all stand up in the middle of the floor, and when the 'sperichil' is struck up begin first walking, and by and by shuffling around, one after the other, in a ring. The foot is hardly taken from the floor, and the progression is mainly due to a jerking, hitching motion which agitates the entire shouter and soon brings out streams of perspiration. Sometimes they dance silently, sometimes as they shuffle they sing the chorus of the spiritual, and sometimes the song itself is also sung by the dancers. But more frequently a band, composed of some of the best singers and of the tired shouters, stand at the side of the room to 'Quoted ibid., p. 125. 'base' the others, singing the body of the song and clapping their hands together or on the knees. Song and dance are alike extremely energetic, and often, when the shout lasts into the middle of the night, the monotonous thud, thud of the feet prevents sleep within half a mile of the praise-house." The modern tango is African in name and motif, and the turkey trot, though not African in name, is not less a descendant of the lascivious African dance." 5 The Nation, May 30, 1867. |