Negro Folk Songs- Vol. 24, 1895

Negro Folk Songs
Reprinted from the Southern Workman Vol. 24 (February 1895): p. 30-32.

NEGRO FOLK SONGS
THE ANNUAL MEETING of the American Folk-Lore Society was held in Washington on Thursday and Friday, December 27th and
28th, 1894. The program was a most interesting one, including the names of Dr. Washington Mathews, Mr. Frank Hamilton Cushing, Mr. Wm. Wells Newell, Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, and others equally well known along the lines of ethnological research. The Hampton Folk-Lore Society sent up to the meeting a paper on "Negro Folk-Songs" made up of material contributed by the club, and compiled by one of its secretaries.

The paper was read by Captain R. R. Moten, and illustrated with songs rendered by a quartet, composed of Mr. F. D. Banks, Mr. Wm. E. Daggs, Mr. J. H. Wainwright and Captain Moton.

The effort was made to give them as nearly as possible in the true plantation style. We publish the paper in full, but wish that we could publish as well the songs which accompanied it. As it is, we can only insert the words, leaving the music to be analysed and published at some future time, when some expert musician has had opportunity to make a thorough study of the wide field of Negro music from phonographic cylinders. Through the efforts of Mr. Wm. Wells Newell and Dr. Thomas Wilson, the quartet after the reading of the paper, had the opportunity of rendering their selections once more to a phonograph,
which was found to reproduce the songs with considerable exactness. It is to be hoped that sometime the Hampton Folk Lore Society will be able to secure a phonograph of its own that it may carry its investigations out along the musical line.

Phonographic records of Negro music of all kinds would be invaluable material for the student of folk-music to work upon and would bring within the range of such students much matter which can now be obtained only with the greatest difficulty. In beginning to write a paper on the Corn-Songs of Ithe Negroes, our subject has widened out before us until it has seemed best to undertake to explain the use and give specimens of the three main varieties of Negro music.

Recent newspaper discussions have taken up the question whether there is to-day a distinct and original music existing among the Negroes. Our work is not to discuss that question, but to furnish material gathered at first hand from the plantation songs of the south, that to some minds at least, seems to show that whenever or wherever that music may have originated, it is to day a part of the life and heart of the colored of the people south, a true body of folk-songs, the outgrowth of the conditions that surrounded in the past, an oppressed and humble, but highly emotional race, who expressed all emotions whether of joy or sorrow, of love or anger, naturally and spontaneously through the medium of rhythmic and musical sounds.

For the sake of clearing up the view of the land we are bound for, it may be well to explain that much of the music generally included under
the head of Negro music must be excluded from this discussion, on the
ground that it is not real folk-music in any sense of the word, but is in
some cases an imitation by white "nigger minstrels" of some of the
wilder or more ridiculous of the shouts or religious songs of the Negroes,
joined with irreverent and incongruous choruses. In this class may be
included "Angels meet me at the Cross Roads," "Golden Slippers,"
"Angel Gabriel," "In the Morning by the Bright Light," and other songs
of the same general character. These songs, composed with the view of
making the religious experience of the Negro a joke for white audiences,
are as far removed from real folk-songs as they well can be, and have
tended to bring the whole subject of Negro music into contempt and
derision.

Of quite a different class, though still far removed from real Negro
music, are the many well known songs, composed by white men to whom
the hard conditions of the slave's life, and the picturesqueness and pathos
of the Negro character appealed strongly. The best of the songs, "Swanee
River," "Old Black Joe," "Old Kentucky Home," and many others are
the work of one man, Stephen C. Foster, though there are others
of almost equal merit not from his pen. In this category may be classed
the war songs that were sung through the streets of all northern cities
during the war, "Wake Nicodemus," "Say Darkies, have you seen de
Massa?" and "Babylon is Fallin." Songs of this class, wherever they
have become popular, have served to awaken an interest in the Negroes,
and so have done their part in helping to bring the white and the black
races into sympathy with each other on the ground of their common
humanity, but they have also served, of late years, to render more difficult
the task of finding, and recognizing when found, the real Negro
music, and have perhaps given color to the statement sometimes made,
that all the music sung by the Negroes is the product of northern white
men, taught to the colored people by missionary teachers who went south
during or after the war.

(At this point the quartet rendered "Old Black Joe," and "The Old Kentucky Home.")

Excluding then from further consideration, the minstrel songs, let
us see what classes of songs we can find that seem actually to have grown
up out of the conditions of the slave life. We find that all plantation
Negroes have one common means of expression. Throughout the South,
Corn-Songs, Dance-Songs, and Shouts or Spirituals, are the three main
divisions of Negro music, and most of the songs indigenous to the soil
may be classified under one or another of these heads. Words may differ,
terms may differ in different localities or in the sarne locality from year
to year, but the Negro must sing as he works, as he plays, and as he
worships, and so these three classes of songs are always found.
The Corn-songs are so named because they were used largely to
expedite the labor at the great annual corn shuckings, where the slaves
from several plantations were gathered together after the harvest, to
shuck the corn already garnered in a great heap in front of the corn crib.
But the name Corn-song applies to all work songs, and, in its broadest
meaning, to all secular music.

Corn-songs have, in common with the spirituals, the characteristic
of the solo or shout, often extemporized to express the thought of the
moment by the leader, and the great chorus which answers with its burst
of harmony from many voices. In the work-songs the rhythm sets the
time of the work on which all are engaged, and the beating of feet, the
swaying of the body or the movement of the arm may be retarded or
accelerated at will by the leader. They thus formed a useful auxiliary to
the plantation discipline and may be said to have had an economic value
in carrying on the productive labor of the South.

Here the quartet gave the two following songs:

CORN SHUCKING SONG.
What in de worl' is de marter here
Oh .......................h.ooh ,
What in de worl is de marter here
Oh ......................o..ho h
Fall out here and shuck dis corn
Oh ......................h..oo h
Bigges pil ever see sence I was born
Oh ......................h..oo.h
Marster's niggers is fat and slick,
Oh ......................h..oo,h
Case dey gits enough to eat
Oh......................h.ooh.
Joneses niggers is mighty po,'
Oh ......................h..oo,h
Don't know whedder dey gets enough er no,
Oh ......................h..oo.h
I loves ol' marster an' mistis too,
Oh ......................h..oo,h
Case deys rich an' kin an' true,
Oh......................h.ooh.
Po white trash I does despise,
Oh ......................h..oo,h
Case dey's always tellin lies,
Oh ......................h..oo.h
Shuck dis corn dis very night,
Oh ......................h..oo,h
While de stars is shinin' bright,
Oh ......................h..oo.h

RUN, NIGGER, RUN, DE PATTEROLER 'LL KETCH YER.
Run, nigger, run patteroler'll ketch yer,
Hit yer thirty-nine and sware 'e didn' tech yer.
(Repeat several times.)
Poor white out in de night
Huntin' fer niggers wid all deir might.
Dey don' always ketch deir game
D'way we fool um is er shame.
Run, Nigger run-
My ole mistis promus me
When she died she'd set me free,
Now d' ole lady's ded an' gone,
Lef dis nigger er shellin corn.
Run, Nigger run-
My ole master promus me
When he died he'd set me free,
Now he's ded an' gone er way
Neber'll come back tell Judgement day.
Run, Nigger run-
I seed a patteroler hin' er tree
Tryin to ketch po' little me,
I ups wid my foots an'er way I run,
Dar by spilin dat genterman's fun.
Run, Nigger run-,

Among the Dance-songs may be included all those musical or
rhythmical combinations of sounds which were used to set the time of
the dances, plays, or marches in which plantation Negroes indulged
when work hours were over. In some of these, the rhythmic expression
is mainly through the beating of feet and patting of hands, while the
vocal expression is simply a rude chant. The whole effect of this music,
if music it can be called, is as barbarous as if rendered in African
forests at some heathen festival. A specimen of this class is the well
known Juba.

(At this point "Juba" was rendered with the accompaniment of
patting with the feet and hands that belongs to it, though the failure to
make connection with a banjoist that the Folk Lorists had hoped to
secure in Washington detracted a little from the completeness of the
effect designed.)

JUBA.
Master had a yaller man
Talles' nigger in de land,
Juba was dat feller's name
De way he strutted was a shame.
Juba, Juba, Juba, Juba-(repeat several times.)
Oh, twas Juba dis and Juba dat
Juba killed de yaller cat
To make his wife a Sunday hat-Juba.
Twas Juba dis an' Juba dat,
His wife was yaller, tall an' fat;
He killed ole missis yaller cat
To make his wife a Sunday hat.
Juba-
Marster had a yaller steer
Ol's de mountin to er year,
I tells ye dis for all er dat
He'd run erway at de drop 'o yer hat.
Whoa Mark
See 'im comin up de road
Pullin on er monstrous load,
Git out'n de way mighty spry
Or he'll tho' you to de sky.
Whoa Mark.
Juba driv dat ole steer
Fer five an' twenty year,
Thu de rain and thu de snow
Juba an de steer'd go,
Whoa Mark-Juba.
When de sun was shinin bright,
Ef twas day, ef twas night,
Hear him holler loud an' strong
Mark, why dont yer git er long.
Golong-Whoa Mark-Juba.
By 'm by dat ole ox died,
Juba he jes cried and cried
Tell one day he ups an' die
I spec he's drivin in de sky.
Golong-whoa Mark-Juba.

In this same class of Dance-songs we find others showing a more
advance musical development, and when to the beating of feet, patting
of hands and chanting of many voices, a skilled banjoist adds the
accompaniment of his instrument, we obtain an effect which is not merely
rousing, but distinctly agreeable.

(At this point was given one of the Game Songs printed in the Southern Workman of April '94, a rousing chorus, but with words and music having a distinctly English flavor, "It rains, it snows, cold stormy weather.")

But it is in the last class, the Shouts or Spirituals, that we find the emotional expression of the Negro reaching its highest development. In
the Spirituals the length and breadth and depth and height of the
American slave's religious and historical experiences are laid bare. The
faith that could endure present suffering in the steadfast hope of a good
time coming in the future, the longing for deliverance, the shout of
triumph when that deliverance came at last, these are the great emotional
utterances of the race through their religious music. But the songs are
adapted as well to the individual, and represent to the singers to-day the
longing of the sinning soul for God and purity, the belief in a final
righting of all wrongs, and the triumph of the redeemed as they enter
upon the new life. There is real poetry in the rude words, and harmony
in the wild strains, the poetry of simple souls possessed and carried away
by great and wonderful emotions which struggle for expression through
limited vocabularies and primitive harmonies. It is true; and the work in every case of the many rather than of the one, it is not art, it is life,-
the life of the human soul itself, manifest in music and in words.
To one who has watched the worshippers in a Negro revival meeting,
who has seen the spoken prayer and half articulated groan or cry
of assent, change by almost imperceptible degrees to the musical recitative
of the leader followed by musical shouts, cries and responses from
the worshipping assembly, there is no longer any mystery about the
origin of the spirituals. They have broken forth from time to time under
stress of great religious excitement from just such assemblies, they have
been retained and repeated by a music-loving people with few other
means of expression, and they have been and are still, to millions of
humble souls in our land, the noblest and holiest and most inspiring
influence in their cramped and poverty-striken lives. No truer folk-music
can be found in this or any other country, than the religious songs of
the black peasantry of the South.
* * *
At the close of the paper the quartet gave several of the well known
plantation spirituals, ending with one that belongs to the era of emancipation,
but which has been only recently obtained by members of the
Folk-Lore Society from some of the old people in the neighborhood.
"Our bondage '11 have an end, by and by, by and by.
Our bondage '11h ave an end, by and by,
Jehovah rules de tide
And the water he'll divide,
Oh, de way he'll open wide
By and by, by and by
De way he'll open wide,
By and by.
Chorus.
From Egypt's yoke set free
Hail de glorious jubilee,
Oh how happy we will be
By and by, etc.
Chorus.
Our Lord will save his own
By de power from his throne,
An' ol' Pharaoh he will drown
By and by, etc.
The paper, with its illustrations was received with many expressions
of interest, and the discussion which followed it was to the Hampton visitors much more interesting than their own paper. Testimony from
several persons present tended to show that the singing of the slaves at
work was regarded by their masters as almost indispensable to the quick and proper performance of the labor, and that the leaders of the singing were often excused from work that they might the better attend to their
part of the business. The statement was also made that on the Mississippi in the old days, the wharf laborers were selected and retained largely
because of their ability as singers, a good singer being regarded as worth
more on the wharves than a laborer who merely did his work and kept
still about it. An instance belonging to the present is that of the canning
establishments in Baltimore, where, as it was said during the discussion,
the leading singers are actually paid more by their employers,
showing that their leading has a distinct money value from the capitalist's
point of view.
During the discussion the question was brought up, as to whether
a number of the songs used in common by whites and Negroes at camp
meeting services were originated by the Negroes or borrowed by them.
One of the Folk-Lorists present had recently heard sung by white worshippers
at a service in Washington a song which he knew to be in
common use among the Negroes fifty years ago, and another cited the
case of the song, "I hope my mother will be there," a well known Negro
"spiritual" which he had heard used in the worship of the mountain
whites in North Carolina.
The appreciation shown of the Hampton society's paper was most
cordial and encouraging, and the Hampton Folk-Lorists feel that in no
way could they have had a better lesson on the work that they are trying
to do than through their attendance at the American Folk Lore Society.