Bahama songs and stories : a contribution to folk-lore / by Charles L. Edwards.

  • Edwards, Charles Lincoln, 1863-1937.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bahama songs and stories : a contribution to folk-lore / by Charles L. Edwards. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the effect of a marvellous complication and variety, and yet with the most perfect time, and rarely with any discord. And what makes it all the harder to unravel a thread of melody out of this strange net- work is that, like birds, they seem not infrequently to strike sounds that cannot be precisely represented by the gamut, and abound in “slides from one note to another, and turns and cadences not in articulated notes.” And Harris (p. 11) says of these songs : “ They are written, and are intended to be read, solely with reference to the regular and invariable recurrence of the csesura, as, for instance, the first stanza of the Revival Hymn : — Oh, whar | shill we go | w’en de great | day comes, | Wid de blow | in’ er de trumpits 1 en de bang \ in’ er de drums ? | How man | y po’ sin | ners ’ll be kotch’d out, late | En fine ] no latch | ter de gold | in’ gate. ] “ In other words, the songs depend for their melody and rhythm upon the musical quality of time, and not upon long or short, ac- cented or unaccented syllables.” The words of these spirituals are generally either taken from the Bible, or suggested from texts therefrom which abound in imagery. (For collections of songs see FikeA Armstrong,^^ Harris, Deming,^^ Trotter,^^ Woodville,^^ and Fortier. They may, however, come from a very different source. Higgin- son (p. 692) gives this account of the genesis of one, from the lips of the originator. “ Once we boys,” he said, “ went for tote some rice, and de nigger-driver he keep a-callin’ on us ; and I say, ‘ O, de ole nigger-driver.’ Den anudder said, ’Fust ting my mammy tole me was, notin’ so bad as nigger-driver.’ Den I made sing, just put- tin’ a word, and den anudder word.” From such an origin, or from the fevered imagination of some great exhorter passing through the fiery furnace of a negro revival, arose most of these songs. Lines, or parts of lines, of one song are often sung to the music of another, and almost any combination of words can be sung to any tune. Oc- tave Thanet 2 says, “ They all have the same characteristics, an erratic melody, a formless yet sometimes brilliant imagination, per- vading melancholy, and no trace of what we call sense.” The use of the pentatonic scale (the fourth and seventh being omitted) was noted in the music of the natives of the Congo (John- ston,^ p. 434), and also in over half of the songs of the Jubilee Singers (Seward This, however, is a characteristic of all barbaric mu- sic, but, together with many traits mentioned above, shows in this case, a sustained relationship to primitive African music. On the contrary, from the frequent occurrence of melodies borrowed from hymn-books, as e. g-. the refrain of the jubilee song, “I’m So Glad,” which is the same as the first half of Pleyel’s Hymn, we can im-