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Since their day they have been imitated--sometimes well,
by the singers of Hampton and Atlanta, sometimes ill, by
straggling quartettes. Caricature has sought again to spoil the
quaint beauty of the music, and has filled the air with many
debased melodies which vulgar ears scarce know from the
real. But the true Negro folk-song still lives in the hearts of
those who have heard them truly sung and in the hearts of the
Negro people.
What are these songs, and what do they mean? I know
little of music and can say nothing in technical phrase, but I
know something of men, and knowing them, I know that
these songs are the articulate message of the slave to the world.
They tell us in these eager days that life was joyous to the
black slave, careless and happy. I can easily believe this of
some, of many. But not all the past South, though it rose from
the dead, can gainsay the heart-touching witness of these
songs. They are the music of an unhappy people, of the
children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering
and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings
and hidden ways.
The songs are indeed the siftings of centuries; the music is
far more ancient than the words, and in it we can trace here
and there signs of development. My grandfather's grandmother
was seized by an evil Dutch trader two centuries ago;
and coming to the valleys of the Hudson and Housatonic,
black, little, and lithe, she shivered and shrank in the harsh
north winds, looked longingly at the hills, and often crooned
a heathen melody to the child between her knees, thus:
Do ba-na co-ba, ge-ne me, ge-ne me!
Do ba-na co-ba, ge-ne me, ge-ne me!
Ben d' nu-li, nu-li, nu-li, ben d' le.
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