CHAPTER I
FOLKSONGS IN GENERAL
The Characteristics of Folksongs — Folksongs Defined — Creative Influences — Folksong and Suffering — Modes, Rhythms and Scales — Russian and Finnish Music — Persistency of Type — Music and Racial Ties — Britons and Bretons
The purpose of this book Is to study the origin and nature of what its title calls Afro-American Folksongs. To forefend, as far as it is possible to do so, against misconceptions it will be well to have an understanding at the outset as to terms and aims. It is essential, not only to an understanding of the argument but also to a necessary limitation of the scope of the investigation, that the term "folksong" be defined. The definition must not include too much lest, at the last, it prove too compass to little. So as far as possible the method of presentation must be rational and scientific rather than rhetorical and sentimental, and the argument be directed straight and unswervingly toward the establishment of facts concerning a single and distinct body of song, regardless of any other body even though the latter be closely related or actually derived from the former.
It is very essential that the word folksong be understood as having as distinctive a meaning as "folklore," "myth," "legend" or "Mdrchen" — which last word, for the sake of accuracy, English folklorists have been forced to borrow from the Germans, It will also be necessary in this exposition to appeal to the Germans to enforce a distinction which is ignored or set aside by the majority of English writers on folksong — popular writers, that is. The Germans who write accurately on the subject call what I would have understood to be folksong das Folkslied; for a larger body of song, which has community of characteristics with the folksong but is not of it, they have the term volksthumliches Lied. This body of song embraces all vocal compositions which have come to be so fondly liked, loved, admired by the people that they have become a native and na'ive popular utterance. So generous, indeed, is the term that it embraces not only the simple songs based on genuine folksong-texts which musicians have set to music, and the large number of artistic compositions which imitate the sentiment and structure of folksongs, but also many lyrics made with conscious art by eminent composers. In the family circles of Germany and at popular gatherings one may hear not only Silcher's setting of "Zu Strassburg auf der Schanz" (which is music set by an artist to a folkpoem), but the same composer's melody to "Ich weiss nicht, was soil es bedeuten" (an artificial folkpoem by Heine), Weber's "Wir winden dir den Jungfernkranz" and Schubert's "Am Brunnen vor dem Thore" (which are artistic products in conception and execution). The English term "popular song" might well and properly be used as a synonym for the German term and be applied to the same kind of songs in English without prejudice to the scientific "folksong," were it not for its degraded and degrading association with the vulgar music hall ditties. These ditties, which a wise Providence has cursed with the blessing of transientness, have companionship in this study with the so-called "coon songs" and "ragtime tunes" in which some of the elements of the Afro-American folksongs are employed.
Only because I cannot see how a paraphrase would improve it in respect of sententiousness, clearness or comprehensiveness, I make use of a definition which I wrote a decade ago for "The Musical Guide" — a dictionary of terms and much else edited by Rupert Hughes and published by McClure, Phillips' &- Go.:
Folksong is not popular song in the sense in which the word is most frequently used, but the song of the folk; not only the song admired of the people but, in a strict sense, the song created by the people. It is a body of poetry Mid music which has come into existence without the influence of conscious art as a spontaneous utterance, filled with characteristic expression of the feelings of a people. Such songs are marked by certain peculiarities of rhythm fomi and melody which are traceable, more or less clearly, to racial (or national) temperament, modes of life, climatic and political conditions, geographical environment and language. Some of these elements, the spiritual, are elusive, but others can be determined and classified.
Though the present purposes are almost purely musical, it will be well to consider that in the folksongs of the world there lies a body of evidence of great value in the study of many things which enter into the science of ethnology, such as racial relations, primitive modes of thought, ancient customs and ancient religions. On this point something shall be said later.
Folksongs are echoes of the heart-b eats of the vast folk and in them are preserved, feelings, beliefs and habits of vast antiquity. Not only in the words, which have almost monopolized folksong study thus far, but also in music, and perhaps more truthfully in the music than in the words. Music cannot lie for the reason that the things which are at its base, the things without which it could not be, are unconscious, unvolitional human products. We act on a recognition of this fact when we judge of the feelings of one with whom we are conversing not so much by what he says to us as by the manner in which he says it. The feelings which sway him publish themselves in the pitch, dynamic intensity and timbre of his voice. Try as we may, if we are powerfully moved we cannot conceal the fact so we open our mouths for utterance. Involuntarily the muscles of the vocal organs contract or relax in obedience to an emotional stimulus, and the drama of feeling playing on the hidden stage of our hearts is betrayed by the tones which we utter. These tones, without purpose on our part, have become endowed with the qualities of gravity and acuteness (pitch), loudness and softness (dynamics), and emotional color (timbre), and out of the union and moaulation of these elements comes expressive melody. Herbert Spencer has formulated the law: "Feelings are muscular stimuli" and "Variations of voice are the physiological results of variations of feeling." In this lies the simple explanation of the inherent truthfulness and expressiveness of the music which a folk creates for itself.
"The folksong composes itself" (Das Volkslied dichtet sick selbst), said Grimm. This''is true despite the obvious fact that every folksong must once have been the utterance of an individual. What is meant by the axiom is that the creator of the folksong is an unindividualized representative of his people, himself a folk-product. His idioms are taken off the tongue of the people; his subjects are the things which make for the joy and sorrow of the people, and once his song is gone out into the world his identity as its creator is swallowed up in that of the people. Not only is his name forgotten, but his song enters at once upon a series of transformations, which (such is the puissant genius of the people) adapt it to varying circumstances of time and place without loss to its vital loveliness. The creator of a folksong as an individual is a passing phenomenon — like a wave of the sea. His potentiality is racial or national, not personal, and for that reason it is enduring, not ephemeral. As a necessary corollary it follows that the music of the folksong reflects the inner life of the people that gave it birth, and that its characteristics, like the people's physical and mental habits, occupations, methods and feelings are the product of environment, as set forth in the definitions.
If Herbert Spencer's physiological analysis of the origins of melody is correct, the finest, because the truest, the most intimate, folk-music is that provoked by suffering. The popular mind does not always think so of music. Its attitude is reflected in the phrase: "Oh, I'm so happy I could sing all day!" But do we sing when we are happy? Song, it is true, is a natural expression of the care-free and light-hearted; but it is oftener an expression of a superficial than a profound feeling. We leap, run, toss our arms, indulge in physical action when in an ecstasy of joy; in sorrow we sit motionless, but, oftener than we are ourselves conscious of the fact, we seek comfort in song. In the popular nomenclature of music the symbols of gayety and gravity are the major and minor moods. It is a broad characterization, and not strictly correct from a scientific point of view; but it serves to point a general rule, the exceptions to which (the Afro-American folk- songs forms one of them) invite interesting speculation.
Comparative analysis of the folksongs of widely distributed countries has shown that some peoples are predisposed toward the minor mode, and in some cases explanations of the fact can be found in the geographical, climatic or political conditions under which these peoples have lived in the past or are living now. As a general rule, it will be found that the peoples of high latitudes use the minor mode rather than the major, A study of one hundred songs from every one of twenty-two countries made by Carl Engel, discloses that of the six most predominantly minor countries of Europe five were the most northern ones, his figures being as follows:
Major Minor Mixed
Sweden 14 80 6
Russia 35 52 13
Norway 40 56 4
Wallachia 40 52 8
Denmark 47 52 1
Finland 58 50 2
Melancholy is thus seen to be the characteristic note of Scandinavian music, which reflects the gloom of the fjords and forests and fearful winters of the northern peninsula, where nature makes human life a struggle and death an ever-present though not necessarily terrifying contemplation.
That geographical and climatic conditions are not the only determining factors in the choice of modes is evident, however, from the case of Russia, which extends over nearly 30 degrees of latitude and has so great a variety of climate that the statement that the mean temperature varies from 32 degrees Fahrenheit at Archangel to 58 degrees at Kutais in the Caucasus, conveys only an imperfect notion of the climatic variability of the country. Yet the minor mode is dominant even in the Ukraine.
If an attempt were made, therefore, to divide Europe into major and minor by drawing a line across the map from west to east along the parallel of the 50th degree of latitude the rule would become inoperative as soon as the Russian border was reached. Thence the isomodal line would take a sharp southward trend of no less than 15 degrees. All Russia is minor; and Russian folksong, I am prone to think, is the most moving and beautiful folk-music in the world. Other influences than the ordinary are therefore at work here, and their discovery need not detain the reader's mind long. Suffering is suffering, whether it be physical or spiritual, whether it spring from the unfriendliness of nature or the harshness of political and social conditions.
While Russian folksong is thus weighted with sorrow, Russian folkdance is singularly energetic and boisterous. This would seem to present a paradox, but the reason becomes plain when it is remembered that a measured and decorous mode of popular amusement is the normal expression of equable popular life, while wild and desperate gayety is frequently the reaction from suffering. There is a gayety of despair as well as of contentment and happiness. Read this from Dr. Norman McLeod's "Note Book":
"My father once saw some emigrants from Lochaber dancing on the deck of an emigrant ship and weeping their eyes out! This feeling is the mother of Irish music. It expresses the struggle of a buoyant, merry heart to get quit of thoughts that often lie too deep for tears. It is the music of an oppressed, conquered, but deeply feeling, impressible, fanciful and generous people. It is for the harp in Tara's halls!"
The rhythms of folksongs may be said to be primarily the product of folkdances, but as these, as a rule, are inspired by the songs which are sung for their regulation, it follows that there is also a verbal basis for rhythms. Whether or not this is true of the rhythmical elements which have entered into Afro-American folksongs cannot be said, for want of knowledge of the languages spoken by the peoples (not people, for they were many and of many kinds) who were brought from Africa to America as slaves. An analogy for the "snap," which is the most pervasive element in the music which came from the Southern plantations (the idiom which has been degraded into "ragtime"), is found in the folk-music of the Magyars of Hungary; and there it is indubitably a' product of the poems.
Intervallic peculiarities are more difficult to explain than rhythmic, and are in greater likelihood survivals of primitive elements. Despite its widespread use, the diatonic scale is an artistic or scientific evolution, not an inspiration or a discovery in the natural world of sound; and though it may have existed in primitive music before it became the basis of an art, there was no uniformity in its use. The most idiomatic music of the Finns, who are an older race in the northern European peninsula than any of the Germanic tribes which are their rulers, is confined to the first five tones of the minor scale; old Irish and Scotch songs share the familiar pentatonic scale (by which I mean the modern diatonic series omitting the fourth and seventh steps) with the popular music of China, Japan, Slam and other countries. It is of frequent occurrence in the melodies of the American negroes, and found not infrequently in those of North American Indians; it is probably the oldest tonal system in the world and the most widely dispersed.
Cesar Cui remarks the prevalence in Russia of two major scales, one without the fourth and the other without the third and seventh. Hungarian melodies employ largely the interval called an augmented, or superfluous, second, which is composed of three semitones. The Magyars are Scythians and racially related to the Finns and Turks, and not to their neighbors, the Poles and Russians; yet the same peculiarity is found in Slavic music — In the songs of the Serbs, Bulgarians, Montenegrins and all the other mixed peoples that inhabit the Balkan Peninsula. The idiom is Oriental and a marked feature of the popular and synagogal music of the Jews.
Facts like these indicate the possibility of employing folksong as an aid in the determination of ethnological and ethnographical questions; for its elements have a marvellous tenacity of life. Let this be remembered when the specific study of American folksong is attempted. The persistency of a type of song in spite of a change of environment of sufficient influence to modify the civilization of a people has a convincing illustration in Finland. Though the Finns have mixed with their Germanic neighbors for many centuries, there was originally no affinity of race between them and their conquerors. Their origin is in doubt, but it is supposed that they are Mongols and therefore relatives of the Magyars. The influence of the Swedes uppn their culture began in the twelfth century, when Christianity was forced upon them, and it has never ceased, though Sweden was compelled by the allied powers to cede Finland to Russia in 1809. Now Russia, though she signed a solemn pact to permit the liberty of language, education and religion to the Finns, is engaged in stamping out the last vestiges of nationalism in the country so beautifully called Suomi by its people.
The active cultivation of music as an art in the modern sense began in Finland toward the close of the eighteenth century, and the composers, directors and teachers were either Germans or Scandinavians educated in Germany. The artistic music of the Finns, therefore, is identified as closely as possible with that of the Scandinavian people, though it has of late received something of a Russian impress; but the vigor and power of primitive influences is attested by the unmistakable elements in the Finnish folksongs. The ancient Finns had the Northern love for music, and their legendary Orpheus was even a more picturesque and potent theurgist than the Greek. His name was Wainamoinen, and when he — tuned his lyre with pleasing woe, Rivers forgot to run, and winds to blow; While listening forests covered, as he played, The soft musician in a moving shade.
To Wainamoinen was attributed the invention of the kantele, a harp which originally had five strings tuned to the notes which, as has been said, are the basis of the Finnish songs, especially those called runo songs, which are still sung. The five-four time which modern composers are now affecting (as is seen in the second movement of Tschaikowsky's "Pathetic" symphony) is an element of the meter of the national Finnish epic, the "Kalevala," whence Longfellow borrowed it for his American epic, "Hiawatha." It, too, is found in many runo songs.
Music is a marvellous conservator. One reason of this is that it is the most efficient of all memory-helps. Another is that among primitive peoples all over the world music became associated with religious worship at so early a period in the development of religion that it acquired even a greater sanctity than words or eucharistic posturing. So the early secular song, as well as the early sacred, is sometimes preserved long after its meaning is forgotten. In this particular, too, folksong becomes an adjunct to ethnology. A striking story is told of how in the middle of the eighteenth century a folksong established fraternal relations between two peoples who had forgotten for centuries that they were of one blood. The tale comes from a French book,' but is thus related in an essay on "Some Breton Folksongs," published by Theodore Bacon in "The Atlantic Monthly" for November, 1892:
In September, 1758, an English force effected a descent upon the Breton coast, at Saint-Cast. A company of Lower Bretons, from the neighborhood of Treguire and Saint-Pol do Leon, was marching against a detachment of Welsh mountaineers, which was coming briskly forward singing a national air, when all at once the Bretons of the French army stopped short in amazement. The air their enemies were singing was one which every day may be heard sounding over the hearths of Brittany. "Electrified," says the historian, grandson himself of an eyewitness, "by accents which spoke to their hearts, they gave way to a sudden enthusiasm, and joined in the same patriotic refrain. The Welsh, in their turn, stood motionless in their ranks. On both sides officers gave the command to fire; but it was in the same language, and the soldiers stood as if petrified. This hesitation continued, however, but a moment: a common emotion was too strong for discipline; the weapons fell from their hands, and the descendants from the ancient Celts renewed upon the battlefield the fraternal ties which had formerly united their fathers."
[M. Th. Hersart de la Villemarque, in his "Barzaz-Breiz," a collection of Breton folksongs, prints two ballads, "Combat de Saint-Cast, par M. de Saint-Pern Couelan," 1836.]
in one of which the battle of Saint-Cast is celebrated, together with two other repulses of English invaders of the Breton coast (at Camaret, in i486, and Guidel, in 1694). Concerning the encounter at Saint-Cast Villemarque advances the theory that the singers were the French sol-diers, and that the reason why the Welshmen stopped in amazement was that they suspected treachery when they heard their own song. The point is of little consequence, but not so the melody which Villemarque prints as that to which the old ballad is sung. This, as it appears in "Barzaz-Breiz," is, note for note, the Welsh tune known as "Captain Morgan's March." The same melody is sung to another ballad describing the siege of Guingamp, which took place in 1488. Now, according to Welsh legend, the Morgan whose name is preserved in the ancient Rhyfelgyrch Cadpen Morgan was "Captain of the Glamorganshire men, about the year 1294, who gallantly defended his country from the incursion of the Saxons and who dispossessed the Earl of Gloucester of those lands which had formerly been taken from Morgan's forefathers," If the air is as old as that it may well be older still, and, indeed, may have been carried into ancient Armorica by the immigrants from Great Britain who crossed the Channel in large numbers in the fifth and sixth centuries. Other relics of their earlier home besides those of language survive among the people of lower Brittany. Had the soldiers at Saint-Cast sat down together and regaled each other with hero legend and fairy tale they would have found that Arthur and Merlin and the korrigan (little fairies) were their common glory and delight. "King Arthur is not dead!" may be heard in Brittany to-day as often as in Cornwall. Moreover, the Welsh song which is sung to the tune of "Captain Morgan's March" and the Breton ballad "Emgann Sant-Kast""- have one vigorous sentiment in common: "Cursed be the Saxon!"