...John W. Roberts Roberts , John W. From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom . Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press , 1989 . Copyright © 1990 by Duke University Press 1990 Boole Reviews 9T As racism persisted after slavery and the lacuna...

...Rebecca T. Cureau Copyright © 1990 by Duke University Press 1990 Willis Laurente James and the Preservation ol Blatk Religious Folk Song Rebecca T Cureau Willis Laurence James (1900-1966) is among a small group of black folklorists who have devoted themselves to the preservation of African...

... Copyright © 1995 by Duke University Press 1995 Chapter r2 The Folk Festival Fort Valley State College has the most unique enterprise of a folk nature held by any of the Negro colleges to come under my noticethe Fort Valley State College Folk Festival. The origin and history of the festival...

... Copyright © 1991 by Duke University Press 1991 Religious Folk-Songs of the Negro I The Negro folk-songs in this volume are arranged in a sequence whose order differs, I believe, from that of any previous publication. The regarding of the songs as actual hymns makes such an arrangement...

... Copyright © 1995 by Duke University Press 1995 Chapter 13 Urban-Rural Cycle I When considering Negro folk music, one automatically thinks of rural folk, and rightly so. The legend of Negro folk music has developed around primitive people. The store of tales, true and imagined, which have...

... Copyright © 1995 by Duke University Press 1995 Chapter 14 The Great Fantasia It is natural that a race that produces its own folk music in quantity and quality would also produce composers, authors, poets, singers, and instrumentalists who distinguish themselves in the idiom of the race...

.... The country from which he came is one rich in folk lore, and also one that has a most interesting native musical idiom. This young man planned to base some compositions on folk themes of his country, and mentioned his plans to certain other musicians. They spoke scornfully of folk music, and said that the use...

... of the tide in the direction of appreciation for the folk traditions that evolved in America during the era of African enslavement. Born at the tum of the century, when many of the oldest black traditions were still transmitted orally in rural areas throughout the South, James began to collect in his youthful...

.... New York: G. Schirmer, 1925. Bolton, Dorothy G., and Harry T. Burleigh. Old Songs Hymnal. New York: Century, 1929. Chappell, Louis W. [ohn Henry: A Folk-Lore Study. Jena: Walter Biedermann, 1933. - - . Songs and Tales from the Dark Continent: Recorded from the Singing and Sayings of C. Kamba Simango...

...," Crisis 37 (1930) : 405-7, 428. 6. R. Nathaniel Dett, review of Negro Workaday Songs by Howard W Odum and Guy B. Johnson, Southern Workman 56 (1927) : 45. 7. Dett, "Understanding the Negro Spiritual," in The Dett Collection of Negro Spirituals, 3rd Group, 3. 8. R. Nathaniel Dett, Religious Folk-Songs...

... power in the creation of art. It seems that this fact about Negro folk music is the most fundamental of the many facts I have discussed. It can be said with authority, backed by a good deal of vigorous evidence, that the Negro often finds his music claimed by the white man with a sense of proud...

... that as a creator of American folk-art the Negro stands unapproached. These folk contributions of the Negro may be grouped under four heads: religious songs, folk tales, dancing, and secular music. To these might be added Negro humor, for the humor of the Negro has not only permeated his folk tales, his dancing...

... memorable. It is a well-known fact that in practically none of the colored churches of the better class, does the primitive Negro folk song find any place. This is not altogether due to the charge often made that the Negro is trying to forget or divorce himself from the past. The trouble is that many songs...

... in religious Negro music was greeted with no such manifestations of encouragement as those which tended to make the exhibition of secular Negro effusions in Carnegie Hall so memorable. It is a well-known fact that in practically none of the colored churches of the better class, does the primitive Negro folk...

... Copyright © 1991 by Duke University Press 1991 The Authenticity of the Spiritual I Inasmuch as folk songs, regardless of locality, are made by people lacking scientific or academic culture, a chief characteristic of all such music is the preservation of certain oddities or even crudities...

... of the song is strophic, being repeated without interruption and having no solo part. II. Folk Songs The popularity of the Negro's own spirituals has naturally led to a desire for excursions into the field of folk songs of other peoples. One finds in such work that the spirit of one people is easily...

... Copyright © 1991 by Duke University Press 1991 The Emancipation of Negro Music There is hardly any folk music which so poignantly touches all the fundamentals of life as that of the American Negro. Though the worth of this music is not yet generally appreciated, even by the Negroes...

... customs and celebrations give proof of this, such as the rituals of the American Indian and of the various religious sects and denominations of the white man in America, from the Shakers of New England to the various Holiness groups of the present. In the case of the folk Negro, a distinction is made...

... is the fact that even among Negroes who practice the shout there are times when religious folk songs are sung and no shouting is done. It all depends on the situation, and it is the situation that usually chooses the music. The shout has its own music, despite the fact that there are times when some borrowing...

... a very special series of influences not like those of any other people in the world. It is therefore necessary for the reader to have a brief introduction that deals with the nature of folk music in general. This must be followed by a discussion about the singing ways and customs of Negroes in Africa...