Folk-Songs of the American Negro
by Joseph Hutchinson Smith
The Sewanee Review, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Apr., 1924), pp. 206-224
[This is an important early article with a few music examples from other sources. It follows the standard earlier work by Higginson, Krehbiel, and Talley. There's no new information, no new collected songs and no music. I've put the footnotes at the end. I've added a couple comments in blue. R. Matteson 2011]
FOLK-SONGS OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO
As opposed to the antiquity of the English and Scottish ballad the song of the American Negro is comparatively new. Serious study of it on the part of Americans seems to have been undertaken only with the breaking out of the Civil War. There were most certainly Negro songs in America when Bishop Percy was editing his Reliques in England; but the forces which at an earlier period led Percy to publish his ballads, and at a later caused Sir Walter Scott to collect and edit the Border Minstrelsy, were at best dormant in antebellum America. The African slave, from the first, held to be one of a despised race, existed and labored, for the most part, in a community which cared nothing for his religion or his social customs, and little or nothing for his songs and his stories, a relatively unchanging state of affairs in the Eastern United States, but which was, as we shall see later, in Louisiana, in the Spanish colonies of Mexico and South America, and in the West Indian islands, considerably mitigated.
In the South, where, previous to the Civil War, the Negroes were always most numerous, a failure to appreciate folk-lore of any kind was probably as much to blame for failure to study the Negro folk-lore as any discouragement for policy's sake on the part of the slave-holding white population. The South, well up to the time of the Rebellion, was an agricultural community, with a landed aristocracy caring little for literature of any sort, least of all for the strange stories and stranger songs of its Negro servants. Such things might do very well to amuse the children or keep the hard-working slaves in a good humor. It was only with the advent of the Freedman's Bureau, the Southern Negro School, and the Northern student army officer, that anyone cared to admit that something of a literary quality existed in such folk productions.
A single exception is discovered in the case of no less a person than the celebrated "Monk" Lewis. In his Journal of a Residence Among the Negroes in the West Indies he gives the history of a very stirring Negro melody which must have been composed about the year 1795. The story goes that a Negro slave who had fallen ill was to be exposed not far from his master's plantation, in order that he might die without causing any further expense to the owner. He made such a piteous plea for mercy that the hearts of his fellow-slaves were melted. He was nursed back to health; and later, made good his escape. In after years, his master, discovering that he was still alive, made a vain attempt to reassert his rights of ownership. Public opinion was aroused to such an extent at that time that the master was forced to set his former slave at liberty. Here is the song, or, rather, the ballad:
"Take him to the gully! Take him to the gully,
But bringee back the frock and the board."
O massa, massa ! Me no deadee yet !
Take him to the gully ! Take him to the gully ;
Carry him along! " [1]
This song, published in 1845, is the oldest recorded Negro song that I have been able to discover. In America (barring the sentimental interest of Stephen Foster, and the purely commercial desires of Christy and other minstrels) the serious study of Negro folk-songs began in 1862 with the publication in Dwight's Journal of Music of a letter about the songs, written by a Miss McKim. This letter was followed the next year by a contribution by H. G. Spaulding of songs and information relating thereto, to the Continental Monthly Magazine. Major Thomas Went worth Higginson, of Boston, gave the new study its final and most influential launching in 1867, with an article on the subject in the Atlantic, followed by a reprinting in his Army Life in a Black Regiment, published at Boston two years later. With such a launching and under such auspices the new study became a fit object of interest to students of literature.
Since that time many books have been written, based upon the ideas of Major Higginson, and upon whatever other new material the individual authors may have happened to possess; each succeeding author quoting all the others so comprehensively that the last word in original criticism and critical research would seem to have been said. Mr. Henry Edward Krehbiel in a book called Afro-American Folksongs, published in 1914, competently sums up the earlier literary criticism on the subject and adds a thorough musical criticism of his own. If it were not for the fact that his work is deficient in original texts of songs it might easily be considered the standard work on the subject. What this book lacks Thomas W. Talley, a colored professor in Fisk University, makes up in his Negro Folk Rhymes, Wise and Otherwise, published two years ago.
These two are the most comprehensive books dealing with the early period in the history of the study. For the later, or present-day period, Professor Newman I. White's large manuscript collection of songs, including his own running comments; and a section of a doctoral dissertation, called Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes, by Howard W. Odum; are the best, although the collections of Professor C. Alphonso Smith are of constantly increasing importance.
In my survey I have consciously avoided an extended discussion of the later and more modern collections of these songs, for the following reasons: my study concerns itself chiefly with the origin and early growth of such songs, and I have felt that there was a greater display of typical folk-spirit in the earlier productions of the American Negro than in the later. I have felt very strongly that the many influences tending to civilize the partially civilized Blacks of the South, especially in recent years, have destroyed the genuine folk-tone of most Negro songs which may be collected nowadays, except such as may be gathered by the Negroes themselves. One of the most notable characteristics of the most reliable collections of true folk-songs is the great dearth of distinctly secular texts; and yet White's collection is full of such texts, and Talley's and Smith's are not free from them, a circumstance which seems to point to the too great influence of modern civilization in more recent collections. Furthermore, other considerations have led me to distrust such songs.
There are more rhymed words in the present-day Negro songs than there were in the earlier ones [Odum's notes], consequently, there is often less meaning in lines or stanzas. The tendency seems to be more toward satisfactory sound-impression than toward spontaneous feeling-expression as in the older spirituals .... the dialect of the older songs is purer than that of the present-day songs.[2]
And there is an increase of profane songs among later collections. Such profanity does not at all fit Major Higginson's account of his findings in the matter:
I never overheard in camp a profane or vulgar song. A few youths from Savannah, who were comparatively men of the world, had learned some of the "Ethiopian Minstrel" ditties, imported from the North. These took no hold upon the mass; and, on the other hand, they sang reluctantly, even on Sunday, the long and short metres of the hymn books, always gladly yielding to the more potent excitement of their own spirituals.[3]
If Major Higginson heard no profane songs in camp it seems to me doubtful that such songs could be heard anywhere, except from the lips of very young, or very incorrigible, Negroes, who had not yet suffered conversion. Vulgarity per se is certainly not a distinctive characteristic of the slave-songs which have come down to us. J. Wesley Work, also of Fisk, and a Negro, says:
Long holds are not natural to this [folk] music; and when ever they occur they indicate a development of the years subsequent to the days of the Folk Song creation. Another peculiarity is the common and surprising use of ejaculations at the dictates of feeling. Such ejaculations take the form of "O Lord!" "Hallelujah!" "O yes!" "S-sing!" "Sing it, children!" and are usually thrown in by the leader, but oftentimes by others, just as the spirit moves; but by whomever it is interjected there is no violence done to the rhythm, and the effect is electrical.[4]
Such traits are especially characteristic of the older texts, and are to be found principally in the older collections. Although it may seem a far cry from the Negro song to the ancient ballad, I would like to indicate certain points of similarity. In the first place, the society which produced this folklore in America was probably not much more primitive than that of our ancestors which first sang ballads. From a purely scientific point of view there are four moments of similarity in the folk-songs proper. The music to which the songs were sung is strikingly like the music of the ballads, and like that of the native Africans. Both Krehbiel and Samuel Taylor-Coleridge, as students of music, have recognized it as a fact; and it is further emphasized by E. M. Hornboste!, in his Musical Appendix to Czekanowski's Forschungen im Nil-Kongo-Zwischengebiet[5] when he speaks of the African music he has studied: "Von den betrachteten Momenten sind manche, wie die obsteigende und dabei fast ausschliesslich pentatonische Melodik, in der Musik der meisten sogenannten Naturvulker zu finden." The primitive musical scale is prevailingly pentatonic, rather than heptatonic, as is the distinctly "civilized-European" scale. The Negro song, as well as the ballad, has been transmitted to us through oral tradition; it is built upon the principle of incremental repetition; and it arose from the community composing as a whole. How did all this come about? The evidence is remarkably complete.
The Negro [says Work] is not so different from other men in his thought as he is in his feelings. In thought, he is generic; in feeling, more specific. His feelings are broader and deeper than those of other men and they have more directive influence and power over him than other men's feelings have upon them.[6]
Work has a tendency to become sentimental in his treatment of the songs, but in this instance I believe he has spoken truly. Civilization is a process inimical to the expression of uncontrolled feeling. To what extent this rule applies it is often difficult to realize, although this discussion may recall enough of the truly primitive in the Negro to give us a hint of the way in which one race has been affected by it. Those of us who have seen Emperor Jones have managed to grasp to some extent the spirit of the savage drum, a spirit which has ruled the Negro almost to the present time, even in America. The rhythm of Negro music once in the memory is as permanent as the rhythm of one's own heartbeat. One never forgets it. It is this rhythm which underlies all the Negro folk-songs and, I believe, much of Negro psychology.
Often in the starlit evening [says Major Higginson], I have returned from some lonely ride by the swift river, or in the plover-haunted barrens, and, entering the camp, have silently approached some glimmering fire, round which the dusky figures moved in the rhythmical barbaric dance the Negroes call a "shout", chanting, often harshly, but always in the most perfect time, some monotonous refrain. The favorite song in camp [was] sung with no accompaniment but the measured clapping of hands and the clatter of many feet.[7]
There is scarcely any description of such a shout which is bet ter than this. Every word is fraught with the wild, strange feeling it must have produced in the hearer. Apparently there was nothing very unusual about the singing and dancing, and yet those who have heard it or seen it have always been puzzled. The smell of the jungle, the spirit of the tom-tom, has been strong upon them.
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.
After conventional hymns have been sung and prayers the benches are pushed back to the wall. . . .said
All stand up in the middle of the floor, and when the "sperichil" is struck up, begin first walking and by-and-by shuffling round, 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. . . . But more frequently a band, composed of some of the best singers and of tried shouters, stand at the side of the room to "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.[8]
The origin of the songs sung at such times as these, accord ing to J. B. I. Marsh, editor of The Story of the Jubilee Singers, is unique. They are never "composed" after the manner of ordinary music, but spring into life, ready-made, from the white heat of religious fervor during some protracted meet ing in church or camp. They come from no musical cultivation whatever, but are the simple, ecstatic utterances of wholly untutored minds.[9]
This sounds like some of the early criticism of the ballads, and would be almost as crack-brained, if it were not in such close accord with the facts. Natalie Curtis Burlin, who arranged the songs now published under the auspices of Hampton Institute, Virginia, while travelling about among the Southern Blacks, noted the phenomenon herself. She describes a Southern church gathering in just the state of mind in which we are most interested:-
The mutterings, the ejaculations, grew louder, more dramatic, till suddenly I felt the creative thrill dart through the people like an electric vibration, that same half-audible hum arose, emotion was gathering atmospherically as clouds gather, and then, up from the depth of some "sinner's" remorse and imploring came a pitiful little plea, a real Negro "moan", sobbed in musical cadence. From somewhere in that bowed gathering another voice improvised a response: the plea sounded again, louder this time and more impassioned; the other voices joined in the answer, shaping it into a musical phrase; and so, before our ears, as one might say, from this molten metal of music a new song was smithied out, composed then and there by no one in particular and by everyone in general.[10]
This, surely, is folk composition in its best sense, and in our own time, almost before our eyes. As an old darky woman is reported to have said:
We simply wanted a new song to sing in church, and we just started to sing this song. Our troubles weighted us down, and, of course, we were thinking of them more than anything else. It came to me this way: "Um! Most done toilin' here," and I sang it; another sister added something else, and it kept on until we had a "new song".[11]
"During slavery," says Work, "in some localities it was a custom to require each new convert, before allowing him to 'join the church', to sing a new song." [12]
In the big meetings, there was a certain set of church members set aside to lead in the moaning, a low, plaintive fragment of melody, sometimes a hum and sometimes accompanied by words of striking character. This is done to help the preacher as he pours out his sermon, which is generally a vivid description of hell and destruction awaiting the sinner. This moan is the accompaniment to the sermon and the combination [adds Work, significantly] has some times wonderful effect upon the unconverted.[13]
It is this sort of 'moaning' which is referred to in the third stanza of The Great Camp Meeting":
Going to moan and never tire,
Moan and never tire,
Moan and never tire,
There's a great camp meeting in the Promised Land.[14]
Thus far we have traced the movement of the song from a fairly primitive to a fairly civilized group, from a Civil War camp to a modern church, and we have shown the manner in which the same forces exhibit themselves under differing conditions. Now we must take a complete step backward in order to show in what way the 'shout' came into being.
According to the testimony of African students at Tuskegee [said Booker T. Washington], there are in the native African melodies strains that reveal the close relationship between the Negro music of America and Africa, but the imagery and sentiments to which the plantation songs give expression are the outcome of the conditions in America under which the transported children of Africa lived.[15]
Since this statement was published the results of rather scanty studies on the part of other investigators of African music have appeared, tending in a more or less conclusive way to prove the same thing: a theory which, from the nature of the case, almost anyone would be inclined to formulate without such proof. In Louisiana, however, a very striking phenomenon was noticed by Krehbiel and Lafcadio Hearn, collaborating. Here were discovered not a few songs made up of words in the African languages and the Creole patois. The most important step in the progress of the folk-song from the savage to the civilized level would seem to have been taken just there. The two languages had come together and that of the stronger race had be gun to prevail, although other features related to the language and contributed by the weaker race had remained as strong as ever. The language of the African was wedded to tunes and to dance steps which have, in spite of slight modifications, profoundly influenced the warm-blooded races which have listened to the one and watched the other. It is from such dances as these that the 'shouts' of the more Eastern Negro have descended.
The famous African explorer, Paul B. Du Chaillu, writing in the seventies of the last century, has described several such dances, as he witnessed them on the dark continent. One he describes as being performed by men who alternately squat and rise, at the same time repeating the monotonous words, "Goom" and "Zap", in infinite series, throughout the night. Another more nearly fits the descriptions of such savage dances as had survived in the United States well up to the time of the Civil War. In their dancing the drum worked upon the natives, as martial music does upon excitable Frenchmen; they lose all control over themselves at its sound and the louder and more energetically the horrid drum is beaten, the wilder are the jumps of the male African, and the more disgust ingly indecent the contortions of the women.[16]
Here we have, for our purposes, a well-nigh unbiased account. Note how closely it tallies with the words of Bescherelle, describing the "Calinda" dance as it was practised in Louisiana before 1867. "The 'Calinda'," says W. F. Allen, "was a sort of Contra-dance, which has now passed entirely out of use," a statement not entirely correct for the day in which it was written?" Bescherelle describes the two lines as 'avanant et reculant en cadence, et faisant des contorsions fort singuliares et des gestes fort lascifs'. [17] "As Hearn saw the Calinda," says Krehbiel, "it was danced by men only, all stripped to the waist and twirling heavy sticks in a mock fight."[18]
Another dance, allied to the "Calinda", and also performed in Louisiana, is described as a sort of minuet, called the Coonjai; [Coonjine] when the Coonjai is danced, the music is furnished by an orchestra of singers, the leader of whom, a man selected both for the quality of his voice and for his skill in improvising, sustains the solo part, while the others afford him an opportunity, as they shout in the chorus, for inventing some neat verse to compliment some lovely danseuse, or celebrate the deeds of some plantation hero. The dancers themselves never sing, as in the case of the religious "shout" of the Port Royal Negroes; and the usual musical accompaniment besides that of the singers, is that furnished by a skilful performer on the barrelhead-drum, the jaw-bone and key, or some other rude instrument.[19]
These dances, barbaric as they were, were intimately connected with the primitive Negro worship, the disappearing remnant of an older culture. It is said that even in the "Calinda" the invocation "Aie! Aie! Voudoo Maignan!" was occasionally heard when the frenzy was at its height.[20] The Protestant in fluence, especially the Methodist and Baptist influences, softened all this in the East, until in the course of time the dance com posed in honor of Voudoo, or Hoodoo, was identified with the worship of Christ, and the meaning of the African words which were its accompaniment was so far forgotten as to make them unintelligible to the dancer himself. One by one the African words were dropped to make way for the more understandable dialect of the White American, but the old tunes and the dances survived. The Eastern 'shout' was one result; the folk-song detached from the dance was probably another, although a some what later, one.
In Louisiana and the Bahamas, where the more lenient Catholic influence prevailed, the excesses of the savage worship were discouraged, but the dances themselves were not suppressed. The Catholics had no particularscruples against allowing Negroes to dance and to sing strange songs; and the Spaniards looked with favor upon any innovations in that line which might be useful to them. In this part of the world, therefore, the Habanera, an early phase of the Tango, grew out of these very same despised dances, and even the originals of the Habanera survived very late.[21] It is said that the Voudoo rites themselves were resumed in Louisiana as recently as 1884. In the Bahamas the old habits have largely degenerated into the custom of coming together and singing all night, called the "settin' up". It is used to serenade the dying as well as to amuse the living, but "it has its merry as well as its sad side."
The hymns continue until after midnight, when comes a pause, with refreshments of coffee and bread. After this come the "anthems", or folk-songs, that have not been learned from a book. The Negro sings now; body, soul, voice, smile, eyes, all his being sings, as if he were created only for music. . . . Some woman or man carries the refrain and all "jine in", from the wise patriarch, with his crown of yellow-gray wool, to the veriest pickaninny.[22]
Besides the barrelhead-drum and the jaw-bone and key the American Negro had a variety of other instruments, the banjo, the violin, the triangle, and the big and little quills being the chief representatives. The banjo and the violin were used to play short accompaniments to long verbal selections, or long musical pieces to short verbal accompaniments. In the long musical pieces a few lines of song might be sung at the beginning or in the middle; "then followed the larger and remaining part of the composition, instruments alone."[23] "I do not recall," says Talley, "any case where lines were sung to the closing measures of the compositions." [24]
The banjo and the violin, when they were used, took the place of the drum, and were one sign of a greater culture. The triangle and the quills were more primitive. The triangle and its striker were one and the same with the U-shaped clives and its pin, used for hitching horses to the plough. The quills "were short reed pipes, closed at one end, made from cane found in our Southern canebrakes. . . .These pipes were whittled square with a jack-knife and were then wedged into a wooden frame, and the player blew them with his mouth."[25] There were five reeds in a little set, and a greater number, probably ten, in a large set.
"It is of interest also to note that the ante-bellum Negro, while repeating his rhymes which had no connection with the dance, usually accompanied the repeating with the patting of his foot upon the ground."[26] More recently, "at a concert given by a company of Fisk singers in a Kentucky town, the audience was composed of students and teachers of a certain academy."[27]
Even here there was considerable movement throughout the audience. The singers were very much amused. In Africa such clapping and stamping is the regular accompaniment to almost all singing. There, too, Hornbostel noted that "Der Mangel namentlich an melodie-tragenden Instrumenten ist bemerkenswert im Hinblick auf die hohe Entwicklung der Polyphonie."[28] In Africa shell-rattles, gourd-rattles, zithers, signal pipes, and, above all, drums, predominate. Both there and in this country the performer on the drum, or its substitute, becomes very proficient, so that the instrument may fairly be said to speak at his touch.[29]
Tuba Blay, or An Evening Song, contributed to Talley's collection of folk rhymes, is a typical African song which has all the rhythm and 'snap' that one likes to associate with Negro productions. It comes from Monrovia, in Liberia.
1. Seah O, Tuba blay,
Tuba blay, Tuba blay.
2. O blay wulna nahn blay,
Tuba blay, Tuba blay.
Translation:
1. O please, Tuba sing,
Tuba sing, Tuba sing.
2. O sing that song,
Tuba sing, Tuba sing.[30]
Whether or not it originated in the dance, Talley does not say. A similar primitive rhythm runs through one of the well
known early songs:
There's a prayer wheel a-burnin'
In my heart,
In my heart,
There's a prayer wheel a-burnin'
In my heart.
In my heart,
In my heart,
There's a prayer wheel a-burnin'
In my heart.[31]
The next step in the composition of such songs, in America, is the step based on incremental repetition. This stage is well illustrated in the old spiritual "Keep a-inching along." The version quoted comes from the most primitive a-inching along like a poo' inch-worm, Massa Jesus coming bye-an'-bye.[32]
This much is the "sponse* or chorus. Then follows the song proper, normally composed of 'call' or verse proper, and the "sponse', alternating.
I. O I died one time, gwine to die no mo',
Massa lesus coming bye-an'-bye,
O I died one time, gwine to die no mo',
Massa Jesus coming bye-an'-bye.
II. O, you in de Lord an' de Lord in you, etc.
III. How can I die when I'm in de Lord, etc.
A higher step in this same stage is a song which Major Higginson records:
I know moon-rise, I know star-rise,
Lay dis body down.
I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight,
To lay dis body down.
I'll walk in de graveyard, I'll walk through de graveyard,
To lay dis body down.
I'll lie in de grave and stretch out my arms;
Lay dis body down.
I go to de judgment in de evenin' of de day,
When I lay dis body down;
And my soul and your soul will meet in de day
When I lay dis body down.[33]
Another form, probably more primitive than either of the two just now given, is curiously parallel to the ballad of The Hangman's Tree:
Good Lord, shall I be de one,
Making fo' de Promise' Lan'?
I see my mother coming,
Coming,
Coming,
I see my mother coming,
Making fo' de Promise' Lan'. [34]
And so it goes: sister, brudder, elder, all "making fo' de Promise' Lan'."
Here is yet another song of the same stage of development, but with a slightly different bias:
And I couldn't hear nobody pray,
And I couldn't hear nobody pray,
O away down yonder by myself,
And I couldn't hear nobody pray, pray,
In the valley!
A-couldn't hear nobody pray,
On my knees!
A-couldn't hear nobody pray,
With my burden!
A-couldn't hear nobody pray,
And my Saviour!
A-couldn't hear nobody pray,
O Lord![35]
This song gives a capital idea of one sort of incremental repetition in its most primitive form. A picture is built up by means of a change in a few words of each new call. How such changes and such consequent building up could come about is well told by Talley in connection with the dance called "Jonah's Ban'."
There was a "Jonah's Band" step. . . The dancers formed a circle, placing two or more of their skilled dancers in the middle of it. . . There was simply patting with the hands and dancing, making a tattoo which might be well represented by the words supplied later on in its existence. Later, I witnessed the same dance, where the patting and dancing were as usual, but one man, apparently the leader, was simply crying out the words, "Setch a kickin' up san'!" and the crowd answered with the words, "Jonah's Ban'!" The words all being repeated in rhythmic harmony with the patting and dancing. ... In some places it was the custom to call on the dancers to join with those of the circle, at intervals in the midst of the dance, in dancing other steps than the Jonah's Band step.[36]
A final phase in its development came with the singing of all the lines in the dance-tune. In this way, then, another type of communal composition made itself evident in the early days, connecting the song and the dance intimately.
The steps in composition are as follows: the dance accompanied by the rhythmic keeping of time; the dance plus shouted directions, or spoken words illustrative of the rhythm; the dance plus connected sentences accurately fitting the rhythm ; the dance plus a'sung' accompaniment; and, finally, the accompaniment minus the dance. It seems likely, moreover, that this cycle was the cycle through which most of the songs would have passed had the dance continued to have the popularity that it claimed in earlier days. As the dance passed out of fashion the shout came in, and was finally lost in the quieter meeting for worship.
When that happened, artistic talent had to take other forms. It expressed itself through composers of hymns and through the more individual composers of secular songs. To be sure, lullabies and songs of a distinctly individual nature had seldom, if ever, been composed by a dancing crowd, or the representative of a dancing crowd; but it is likely that many folk-songs were so composed. Some religious songs had been used for shouting, and others for marching or rowing.
Lafcadio Hearn and Krehbiel, as we have seen, found in Louisiana many traces of songs bearing marks of an African origin. Talley thought he found a few such traces farther East. Such a one as,
Tig, tig, malaboin
La chelema che tango
Redjoum![37]
is characteristic. When Hearn asked his black nurse what it meant, she said: "Mais c'est Voudoo ca: Je n'en sais rien!" That was in 1878. Later, in a letter to Krehbiel, Hearn wrote as follows:
Here is the only Creole song I know of with an African refrain that is still sung, don't show it to C. [George W.
Cable], it is one of our treasures.
[Pronounce "Wenday" and "Afakkiah."]
Ouende, ouende, macaya!
Mo pas barrasse, macaya!
Ouende, ouende, macaya!
Mo bois bon divin, macaya!
Ouende, ouende, macaya!
Mo mange bon poulet, macaya!
Ouende, ouende, macaya!
Mo pas barrasse, macaya!
Ouende, ouende, macaya!
Macaya!
I wrote from the dictation of Louise Roche. She did not know the meaning of the refrain, her mother had taught her, and the mother had learned it from the grandmother. However, I found out the meaning, and asked her if she now remembered. She leaped in the air for joy--apparently Ouendai, or ouende, has a different meaning in the eastern Soudan; but in the Congo, or Fiot, dialect it means "to go," "to continue to go," "to go on." I found the word in Jeannest's vocabulary. Then macaya I found in Turiault's "Etude sur le Langage Creole de la Martinique:" 'ca veut dire manger tout le temps'--'excessivement.' Therefore, here is our translation:
Go on! go on! eat enormously!
I ain't one bit ashamed, eat enormously!
Go on! go on! eat prodigiously!
I drink good wine! eat ferociously!
Go on! go on! eat unceasingly!
I eat good chicken, gorging myself!
Go on! go on ! etc.
How is this for a linguistic discovery? The music is almost precisely like the American river music, a chant, almost a recitative, until the end of the line is reached: then for your mocking music![38]
Talley's examples are taken from recitations of so-called Guinea or Ebo Negroes, who were, he explains, "a rare type of Negro, which has long since disappeared."[39] He thinks that they came from Africa or from some other foreign country. One of these peculiar rhymes was called The Frog in a Mill:
Once dere wus er frog dat lived in er mill.
He had er raker don la bottom o' la kimebo,
Kimebo, nayro, dilldo, kiro,
Stimstam, formididdle, all-a-board la rake;
Wid er raker don la bottom o' la kimebo.[40] [This is a version of Kemo Kimo, a minstrel song- not an African song]
Through such transitions the Negro rhymes passed over from the African to the American dialect and became in time the many hundreds of American Negro rhymes with which we are familiar. From the day when that happened until now the Negro has been composing new rhymes and re-composing old ones. Most of these rhymes have been sung to whatever melody best pleased his ear or suited his primitive taste, for harmony was always a matter of individual taste among the primitive singers of these songs; but sometimes they have been spoken.
Of the spoken rhymes, two stand out prominently in Talley's collection: both have an air of the ridiculous about them, and
both are connected with love-making or with marriage.
ANTE-BELLUM COURTSHIP INQUIRY
(He) Is you a flyin' lark or a settin' dove?
(She) I'se a flyin' lark, my honey Love.
(He) Is you a bird o' one fedder, or a bird o' two?
(She) I'se a bird o' one fedder, w'en it comes to you.
(He) Den, mam:
I has a desire, an' quick temptation,
To jine my fence to yo' plantation.[41]
SLAVE MARRIAGE CEREMONY
Dark an' stormy come de wedder;
I jines dis he-male an' dis she-male togedder.
Let none, but Him dot makes de thunder,
Put dis he-male an' dis she-male asunder.
I darfore 'nounce you bofe de same.
Be good, go 'long, an' keep yo' name.
De Broomstick's jumped, de worl's not wide,
She's now yo' own. Salute yo' bride! [42]
The last two lines of this ceremony refer to the old custom of jumping a broomstick in lieu of any more formal marriage rite. Could anything be more primitive?
Of songs there are a host, divided by some authorities into as many as twelve different groups; but all are bound together by a common heritage of an intense rhythm and a primitive psychology. As they approach in composition and in feeling the requirements of civilized and highly cultured people, their variety increases, their language becomes more abstract, and their imagery more poetic. Incremental repetition no longer holds such complete sway. Two examples of these latter-stage songs are all that space will warrant. I must close with them.
CHUCK WILL'S WIDOW SONG
Oh nimber, nimber Will-o !
My crooked, crooked bill-o !
I'se settin' down right now, on de sweet pertater hill-o.
Oh nimber, nimber Will-o!
My crooked, crooked bill-o !
Two liddle naked babies, my two brown aigs now fill-o.
Oh nimber, nimber Will-o!
My crooked, crooked bill-o!
Don't hurt de liddle babies ; dey is too sweet to kill-o.[43]
LOVE IS JUST A THING OF FANCY
Love is jes a thing ob fancy,
Beauty's jes a blossom;
If you wants to get yo' finger bit,
Stick it at a 'possum.
Beauty, it's jes skin-deep;
Ugly, it's to de bone ;
Beauty, it's jes fade 'way ;
But Ugly'll hol'er own.[44] [This was first collected by Perrow. Whether Talley appropriated it from Perrow or collected it himself is unknown.]
Joseph Hutchinson Smith.
The College of William and Mary.
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FOOTNOTES
1. Quoted by Krehbiel : Afro-American Folksongs, p. 24.
2. Odum : Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes, p. 10. [I have taken the liberty of correcting Odum's grammar.]
3. Higginson: Army Life in a Black Regiment, pp. 221-222.
4. Work: Folk Song of the American Negro, pp. 38-39.
5. Czekanowski : Forschungen im Nil-Kongo-Zwischengehiet, p. 411. Cf. also Marsh : The Story of the Jubilee Singers, p. 122.
6. Folk Song of the American Negro, p. 11.
7. Army Life iq, a Black Regiment, ppf 197-198.
8 The Nation (New York), May 30, 1867.
9 The Story of the Jubilee Singers, p. 121.
10. Hampton Series Negro Folk-Songs, Book IV, p. 4.
11. Folk Song of the American Negro, p. 82.
12 Ibid., p. 41.
13. Ibid., p. 83.
14. Ibid., p. 46.
15. Twenty-four Negro Melodies Transcribed for the Piano; Preface, p. viii.
16. Du Chaillu: Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, p. 236.
17. Slave Songs of the United States, p. 113.
18. Afro-American Folksongs, p. 121.
19. Slave Songs of the United Stales, p. 113.
20. George W. Cable, in Century Magazine, April, 1886, article entitled Creole Slave Songs. Cf. also Krehbiel : Afro American Folksongs, p. 40.
21. See Krehbiel : Afro-American Folksongs, p. 40.
22. Edwards : Bahama Songs and Stories, p. 18.
23. Talley :N egro Folk Rhymes, p. 236.
24. Ibid., p. 239.
25. Ibid., pp. 303-4.
26. Ibid., p. 233.
27 Work: Folk Song of the American Negro, p. 38.
28 Czekanowski: Forschungen im Nil-Kongo-Zwischengebiet, p. 381.
29. Cf. Krehbiel: Afro-American Folksongs, p. 66.
30. Negro Folk Rhymes, p, 217.
31. Hobson: In Old Alabama, pp. 188-189.
32. Haliowell: Calhoun Plantation Songs, p. 7.
33. Army Life in a Black Regiment, p. 206, no. xviii.
34. Calhoun Plantation Songs, p. 48.
35 Fenner: Religions Folksongs of the Negro, pp. 160-161.
36. Negro Folk Rhymes, pp. 259-260.
37. Afro-American Folksongs, p. 37.
38. Letter to Krehbiel, Febuary, 1884. See Afro-American Folksongs, p. 39.
39. Negro Folk Rhymes, p. 247.
40. Ibid., p. 167.
41 Negro Folk Rhymes, p. 135.
42 Ibid., p. 143.
43 Ibid., p. 156.
44. Ibid., p. 2. N. B. This is a dance-rhyme.