CHAPTER IV
MODAL CHARACTERISTICS
OF THE SONGS
An Analysis of Half a Thousand Negro Songs-
Division AS to Modes — Overwhelming Preva-
lence OF Major — Psychology of the Pheno-
menon — Music as a Stimulus to Work —
Songs of the Fieldhands and Rowers.
To lay a foundation for a discussion of the idioms of the
folksongs created by the American negroes I have examined
527 negro songs found in six collections, five of which have
appeared in print. Of these five collections, four are
readily accessible to the student. The titles of the printed
collections are :
"Slave Songs of the United States," edited by William
Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware and Lucy McKim
Garrison; published by A. Simpson & Co., New York,
1867. This work, by far the most valuable and compen-
dious source, as it is the earliest, is out of print and difficult
to obtain.
"The Story of the Jubilee Singers, with Their Songs,"
by J. B. T. Marsh. Published by Houghton, Osgood & Co.,
Boston, 1880. This is a revised edition of two earlier
publications, the music arranged by Theodore F. Seward
and George L. White, of which the first was printed by
Bigelow & Main, New York, in 1872.
"Religious Folk Songs of the Negroes as Sung on the
Plantations," arranged by the musical directors of the
Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute from the
original edition of Thomas P. Fenner. Published by the
Institute Press, Hampton, Va., 1909. The original edition,
entitled "Cabin and Plantation Songs as Sung by the
Hampton Students," was published in 1874; an enlarged
edition by Thomas P. Fenner and Frederic G. Rathbun,
by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, in 1891.
[ 42 ]
MODAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SONGS
o
"Bahama Songs and Stories. A Contribution to Folk-
Lore," by Charles L. Edwards, Ph. D. Boston and New-
York, published for the American Folk-Lore Society by
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1895.
"Calhoun Plantation Songs," collected and edited by
Emily Hallowell; first edition, 1901; second edition, 1907;
Boston, C. W. Thompson & Co.
These books, as well as the author's private collection,
have been drawn on not so much to show the beauty and
wealth of negro folksong as to illustrate its varied charac-
teristics. An analysis of the 527 songs in respect of the
intervallic structure of their melodies is set forth in the
following table:
Ordinary major 331
Ordinary minor 62
Mixed and vague 23
/Pentatonic Ill
Major with flatted seventh 20
Major without seventh 78
I , Major without fourth 4S
V Minor with raised sixth 8
Minor without sixth 34
Minor with raised seventh (leading-tone) 19
"Almost all their songs were religious in their tone,
however quaint their expression, and were in a minor
key, both as to words and music," wrote Colonel Higgin-
son, in "The Atlantic Monthly."-7^"They that walked in
darkness sang songs in the olden days — sorrow songs —
for they were weary at heart. . . . They (the songs)
are the music of an unhappy people, of the children of
disappointment; and they tell of death and suffering and
unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wander-
ings and hidden ways,'| says Dr. Du Bois, in "The Souls
of Black Folk." — ^"A tinge of sadness pervades all the melo-
dies, which bear as little resemblance to the popular
Ethiopian melodies of the day as twilight to noonday,"
wrote Mr. Spaulding, in "The Continental Monthly."
Mr. Allen, in his preface to "Slave Songs," avoids musical
terminology as much as possible, and has nothing to say
about the modes of the melodies which he records, though
his description of the manner of singing and some of the
peculiarities of intonation, in which I recognize character-
[ 43 ]
AFRO-AMERICAN FOLKSONGS
istic idioms of the music, is so lucid as to enable a scientific-
student to form definite conclusions on technical points
with ease. Colonel Higginson evidently did not intend
that the word "minor" should have any other than its con-
ventional literary meaning, which makes it a synonym for
melancholy. The musical terminology of explorers, as
has been remarked, is not to be depended on, and little
is to be learned from them as to the prevailing modal
characteristics of the music of the many peoples of Africa.
Hermann Soyaux, in his "Aus West-Afrika," says that the-
negroes of Sierra Leone always sing in minor. Friedrich.
Ratzel says that the Bongo negroes sometimes sing in
minor. "Their style," says Richard F. Burton, in the-
"Lake Regions of Central Africa," "is the recitative
broken by a full chorus, and they appear to affect the
major rather than the interminable minor of the Asiatic."^
Carl Engel, in his "Introduction to the Study of National
Music," gives it out as a generalization that most of the
African melodies are major. Of the seven African melodies
which Coleridge-Taylor utilized in "Twenty-four Negro.
Melodies," five are major, two minor. Of the 527 melo-
dies analyzed in the above table, less than 12 per cent are
minor, the remainder either major or pentatonic, with a
slight infusion, negligilJle at this stage of the argument, of
melodies in which the mode is unpronounced.
It is plain, therefore, either that the popular conception^
which I have permitted to stand with a qualification, of the
minor mode as a symbol of suffering, is at fault in respect
of the folksongs of the American negroes, or that these songs-
are not so poignant an expression of the life of the black
slaves as has been widely assumed. The question deserves^
looking into. As a matter of fact, musicians know that the
major and minor modes are not unqualified expressions
of pleasure and pain, gayety and gravity, happiness and
sorrow. Funeral marches are never expressions of joy,,
yet great funeral marches have been written in the major
mode — Handel's Dead March in "Saul" for instance — and
some of the maddest scherzos are minor. It may be
questioned, too, whether or not, as a matter of fact (the
[ 44 ]
MODAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SONGS
physiological and psychological explanation of which is
not within the scope of this study), the life of the black
slaves was, on the whole, so weighted with physical and
spiritual suffering as necessarily to make its musical ex-
pression one of hopeless grief. Perhaps an innate lightness
of heart and carelessness of disposition, carefully cultivated
by the slaveholders for obvious reasons, had much to do
with the circumstance that there are few utterances of
profound sadness or despair found in the songs, but many
of resilient hopefulness and cheerful endurance of present
pain in contemplation of the rewards of rest and happiness
hereafter. The two emotional poles in question are touched
in the settings of the song "Nobody Knows."
Colonel Higginson seems to have sounded the keynote of
the emotional stimulus of the songs when he spoke of their
infinitepathos as a commentary on the livesof their creators :
"Nothing but patience for this life — nothing but triumph in
the next." This feeling was encouraged by the attitude,
legal and personal, of the slave owners toward their human
chattels. To let them acquire an education was dangerous,
for, as a rule, insurrections were fomented by educated men ;
but to encourage them in their rude, emotional religious
worship was not harmful and might be positively beneficial.
Under such circumstances it was natural that the poetical
expressions of their temporal state should run out in
religious allegory, and here the utterance had to be pre-
dominantly cheerful in the very nature of the case. They
could not sing of the New Jerusalem, toward which they
were journeying, in tones of grief. The Biblical tales and
imagery, which were all of the book which seized upon their
imagination, also called for celebration in jubilant rather
than lugubrious accents. The roUing of Jordan's waters, the
sound of the last trump, the overwhelming of Pharaoh's
hosts, the vision of Jacob's ladder, the building of the Ark,
Daniel in the den of lions, Ezekiel's "wheel in the middle of
a wheel," Elijah's chariot of fire, the breaking up of the uni-
verse — all these things and the lurid pictures of the Apoca-
lypse, whetherhymned with allegoricalintentor as literal con-
ceptions, asked forswellingproclamation. And all received it.
[ 45 ]
AFRO-AMERICAN FOLKSONGS
It Is possible, of course, even likely, though the records
are not convincing, that restrictions were placed upon the
songs of the slaves, in which an explanation may be found
for the general tone of cheer, not unmixed with pathos,
which characterizes the music. There is a hint of this in
a remark recorded by Mrs. Frances Anne Kemble in her
"Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation," name-
ly: "I have heard that many of the masters and overseers
on these plantations prohibit melancholy tunes or words
and encourage nothing but cheerful music and senseless
words, deprecating the effect of sadder strains upon the
slaves, whose peculiar musical sensibility might be ex-
pected to make them especially excitable by any songs
of a plaintive character and having reference to their
particular hardships." Examples of such restrictive regu-
lations are not unknown to history. The Swiss soldiery
in the French army were prohibited from singing the
melody of the "Ranz des Vaches" because It produced
homesickness, and the Austrian government has several
times forbidden the sale of the Rakoczy March and con-
fiscated the music found In the shops in times of political
disturbance in Hungary.
Had the folksongs of the American negro been conceived
in sorrow and born in heaviness of heart by a people
walking in darkness, they could not have been used indis-
criminately, as they were, for spiritual comfort and physical
stimulation. It is the testimony of, the earliest collectors
that they were so used. Though it cannot be said that the
employment of music to lighten and quicken work and In-
crease Its efficiency was peculiar to the slave life of America,
it is nevertheless worth noting that this use, like some of
the idioms of the music itself, was a relic of the life of the
negroes in their aboriginal home. James Augustus Grant,
In his book "A Walk Across Africa," as cited by Wallaschek,
says that his people when cleaning rice were always sup-
ported by singers, who accompanied the workers with
clapping of hands and stamping of feet. George Francis
Lyon, in his "Narrative of Travels In Northern Africa,"
says that at one place he heard the negro women singing
[ 46 ]
MODAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SONGS
a national song in chorus while pounding wheat, always in
time with the music. "Mr. Reade observed," says Walla-
schek, citing W. Winwood Reade's "The African Sketch
Book,"i "that his people akvays began to sing when he
compelled them to overcome their natural laziness and to
continue rowing." Here the song, of course, had for its
purpose the promotion of synchronism in movement,
like the rhythm of the march all the world over.
It is immaterial whether the use of song as a stimulant
to work was brought from Africa or was acquired in
America; the significant fact is that wherever negro
slavery existed on this continent there it was found. In
his peculiarly fascinating book "Two Years in the French
West Indies," Lafcadio Hearn says: "Formerly the work
of cane-cutting resembled the march of an army — first
advanced the cutlassers in line, naked to the waist; then
the amareuses, the women who tied and carried, and be-
hind these the ka, the drum, with a paid crieur or crieuse,
to lead the song, and lastly the black commandeur for
general." In his preface to Coleridge-Taylor's "Twenty-
fpur Negro Melodies" Booker T. Washington says:
'''^'Wherever companies of negroes were working together,
in the cotton fields and tobacco factories, on the levees and
steamboats, on sugar plantations, and chiefly in the fervor
of religious gatherings, these melodies sprang into life.
Oftentimes in slavery, as to-day in certain parts of the
South, some man or woman with an exceptional voice was
paid to lead the singing, the idea *laeing to increase the
amount of labor by such singing.y And thus speaks the
writer of the article entitled "American Music" in "The
American History and Encyclopaedia of Music," published
by Irving Squire: "Work on the plantations was often
done to the accompaniment of songs, whose rhythmic
swing acted as an incentive to steadier and better labor;
especially was this true with the mowers at harvest.
Charles Peabody tells of a leader in a band of slaves who
was besought by his companions not to sing a certain
song because it made them work too hard. Again, on the
»Vol. 11, page 313.
[ 47 ]
AFRO-AMERICAN FOLKSONGS
boats plying between the West Indies and Baltimore and
the Southern ports, which were manned by the blacks,
song was used for the same purpose. Later, on the South-
ern river boats, the same method was utilized. These
boat-songs usually were constructed of a single line followed
by an unmeaning chorus, the solo being sung by one of
the leaders and the rhythmic refrain repeated over and
over by the workers."
There is nothing especially characteristic of slave life
in such "water music" except its idiom. The sailorman's
"chanty," I fancy, is universal in one form or another.
The singular fact to be noted here is that the American
negro's "spirituals" were also his working songs, and the
significance which this circumstance has with relation
to their mood and mode. The spirituals could not have
been thus employed had they been lugubrious in tone or
sluggish in moveinent. The paucity of secular working
songs has already been commented on. Of songs referring
to labor in the field the editors of "Slave Songs of the
United States" were able to collect only two examples.
Both of them are "corn songs," and the first is a mere
fragment, the only words of which have been preserved
being "Shock along, John." The second defied interpre-
tation fifty years ago and is still incomprehensible:
Five can't ketch me and ten can't hold me —
Ho, round the corn, Sally!
Here's your iggle-quarter and here's your count-aquils —
Ho, round the corn, Sally!
I can bank, 'ginny bank, 'ginny bank the weaver —
Ho, round the corn, Sally!
"The same songs are used for rowing as for shouting,"
says Mr. Allen, and adds : "I know of only one pure boat
song, the fine lyric, 'Michael, row the boat ashore'; and
this I have no doubt is a real spiritual — it being the Arch-
angel Michael that is addressed."
■^ My analytical table shows that three-fifths of the songs\
which I have examined contain the peculiarly propulsive
rhythmical snap, or catch, which has several times been
^described as the basis of "ragtime.^
It is this rhythm which helps admirably to make a
physical stimulus of the tunes, and it is noteworthy that
[ 48 ]
MODAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SONGS
it is equally effective in slow and fast time. Essentially,
therefore, it has nothing to do with the secular dance,
though it plays a large part in the "shout." Mr. Ware
mentions twelve songs as among the most common rowing
tunes, and says of them: "As I have written these tunes
two measures are to be sung to each stroke, the first
measure being accented by the beginning of the stroke,
the second by the rattle of the oars in the rowlocks. On
the passenger boat at the (Beaufort) ferry they rowed
irom sixteen to thirty strokes a minute; twenty-four was
the average. Of the tunes I heard I should say that the
most lively were 'Heaven bell a-ring,' 'Jine 'em,' 'Rain
fall,' 'No man,' 'Bell da ring' and 'Can't stay behin' '; and
that 'Lay this body down,' 'Religion so sweet' and 'Michael,
row,' were used when the load was heavy or the tide was
against us."
A few additonal comments seem to be justified by
these songs. Of the twelve, only three contain references
to a water passage of any sort. In "Praise member"'
two lines run:
Jordan's bank is a good old bank,
And I hain't but one more river to cross.
In "Michael, row the boat ashore" the archangel's boat
is darkly described as a "gospel boat" and also as a "music
"boat," but there is no connection betwen these epithets
and the rest of the song. "Praise member" presented a
riddle to the editors, which they might have solved had they
reflected on the effect which its use as a rowing song may
liave had upon its text.
Mr. Ware gives the last verse as "O I wheel to de right
and I wheel to de left"; Colonel Higginson contributes a
variant reading, "There's a hill on my leff, an' he catch
•on my right" and adds the only and unsatisfactory explana-
tion given to him : "Dat mean if you go on de leff you go
to 'struction, and if you go on de right go to God for sure."
Miss Charlotte L. Forten has another version, "I hop on
my right an' I catch on my leff," and makes the shrewd
observation that she supposes that "some peculiar motion
iNo.S of "Slave Songs."
[ 49 ]
AFRO-AMERICAN FOLKSONGS
of the body formed the original accompaniment of the
song, but has now fallen into disuse." If the rowing singer
meant "hold" or "stop" or "back" on my right and catch
on my left, even a novice at the oars would have understood
the motion as a familiar one in steering.
This is interesting, I think, though outside of the parti-
cular line of argument for which I introduced the working
songs of the slaves — namely, to explain their general cheer-
fulness. Just as interesting is a singular custom which Mr.
Reuben Tomlinson mentions in connection with the enig-
matic song beginning "Rain fall and wet Becca Lawton,"
which has a refrain, "Been back holy, I must come slowly.
Oh! Brudder, cry holyl" In place of "Been back" there
are as variants "Beat back," "Bent back" and "Rack
back."/ When the song is used for rowing, Mr. Tomlinson
says, "at the words 'Rack back holy' one rower reaches
back and slaps the man behind him, who in turn does the
same and so on." It is not impossible, or even improbable,
that this form of the game which was played in my boy-
hood, called "Pass it along," was an African survivaLj
It may be, too, that there is another relic, an Amcan
superstition, in the song. Colonel Higginson heard It as
"Rain fall and wet Becky Martin"; a variant of the first
line of the song as printed in "Slave Songs" is "Sun shine
and dry Becca Lawton." Colonel Higginson comments:
"Who Becky Martin was, and why she should or should
not be wet, and whether the dryness was a reward or a
penalty, none could say. I got the impression that in
either case the event was posthumous, and that there was
some tradition of grass not growing over the grave of the
sinner; but even this was vague, and all else vaguer."
In their note on the song the editors of "Slave Songs" say:
"Lieutenant-Colonel Trowbridge heard a story that Peggy
Norton was an old prophetess who said that it would not
do to be baptized except when it rained; if the Lord was
pleased with those who had been 'in the wilderness', he
would send rain." To go into the wilderness was to seek
conversion from sin, to go to "the mourners' bench," as
our Methodist brethren say. Mr. Tomlinson said that the
[ SO ]
MODAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SONGS
song always ended with a laugh, and he concluded from
this that the negroes themselves regarded it as mere non-
sense.
Not much else are the words of two Mississippi River
songs, which are printed herewith, the music of which,
however, has elements of unique interest. "Oh, Rock Me,
Julie," (see p. 52) and "I'm Gwine to Alabamy" (see p. 53),
are singularly alike in structure, with their exclamatory
cadenza. They are also alike in bearing a resemblance
to the stereotyped formula of the music of the North
American Indians, with its high beginning and the repeti-
tion of a melodic motif on lower degrees of the scale. But
"Rock Me, Julie," is unique in being built on the whole-
tone scale, which has caused so much comment since De-
bussy exploited it in artistic music.
There is nothing in either words or music necessarily
to connect a "Cajan" boat-song in my manuscript collection
(see page 54) with the folksongs of the negroes, but the
song is intrinsically interesting as a relic of the Acadian
period in Louisiana. It was written down for me from
memory a generation ago by Mrs. Wulsin, mother of the
late Lucien Wulsin, of Cincinnati, a descendant, I believe,
of one of the old couriers des bois. It is a canoe, or paddling,
song, and there is no trace of the creole patois in its text.
Les marenquins nous piquent —
II faut pagayer;
L'on ne passe sa vie
Toujours en pagayant.
Pagaie, pagaie, pagaie, mon enfant.
(The mosquitoes sting us; we must paddle. One's life is not all passed in
paddling. Paddle, paddle, paddle, my boy.)
The lines in the second verse as they remained in
Mrs. Wulsin's memory do not adjust themselves to the
melody, but they, no doubt, preserve the sense of the old
song:
Toute la semaine
L'on mange de la sacamite,
Et le Dimanche pour se regaler
L'on mange du gombo file.
Pagaie, etc.
(All the week we eat sacamite, and on Sundays, for good cheer, we eat gombo
file. Paddle, etc.)
[ 51 1
AFRO-AMERICAN FOLKSONGS
80I0
Oh! Rock Me Julie
Chorus
Words ajid melody received by the aathor from He George W. Cable. The arrangement mada
for this work by H.T, Burleigh. The melody is based on Ihe "whole .tone" scale.
[ 52 ]
MODAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SONGS
I'm Gwiiie to Alabamy
Moderato
'/\i'ni I J ^
^^
F imily j
Z. She went from ole Vlrgba^,
And im her pickaninny;
3-.She Ures on the Tombig1>ee,
I wish I had her Wid me.
4. tlaw iVn » gtwd big' nigg«r,
I reckon I worft git bigg-er.
^. But lU like to see my mamn^,
Who lives in Alabamy.
"A very good specimen, so far as notes can give oneV says tbe editor of "SlaTe Songs of the
United States", "of the.strange barbaric songs that one bears npon the Western Steamboats','
The arrangement made for this work by H. T. Borleigh.
[ 53 ]
AFRO-AMERICAN FOLKSONGS
Acadian Boatmen's Song
Con mato
yer, L'on ne pas-se b&
1 ^ P p N W' ,^
yi - e ton-Jonis en pa-ga-
■1
yant.
^1> J » h
» J V J
i j 71
J '^ J~]
• 1 » II
k 1 ^ 1
Ir -J 1
— 4 a
^ J
IJ > ■
Pa • gai - e, pa . gai - e, pa - gai • e, mon en - font.
^m
^m
k-r :~s
W
m
J~3 rn
^^
&
Written do'wn as a recoUectian other cbildliood in New Orleans ty Hrs-Wolsln, mofter of the
late Lncien Wolsin of Cincinnati, for the author. The arrangement made for this pobUcation by
H-TBorleigh.
[ 54 ]
MODAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SONGS
"Sacamite," Lafcadio Hearn wrote in my notebook,
"is a favorite Creole (and, of course, Acadian) dish made
of corn broken and boiled with milk into a sort of thick
soup. I do not know the etymology of this word."
[ 55 ]