Page:Natalie Curtis - Negro Folk-Songs Book 1.djvu/20

 GO DOWN, MOSES

First Version

Recorded from the singing of

THIS song is full of that quality of elemental drama that underlies primitive music born of profound emotion. It is one of the best known of the Spirituals and deserves to rank with the great songs of the world. The melody may be very old1: it sounds as though it might have sprung from the heart of ancient Africa; and so indelibly does it carve its outline on the memory that it could well outlive generations of men and be carried from land to land. Like that Negroid influence that had its part in the shaping of the culture of the Egyptians, the Semites and the earliest Greeks, this melody will live on, moving from race to race — one of the immortals in art.

The American-Negro verses, "Go Down, Moses," were born, of course, of slavery in this country. In the sorrows of Israel in Egypt, oppressed and in bondage, the Negro drew a natural poetic analogy to his own fate, and this song is not the only one that refers to the story of Moses.2 Rarely does the slave dare to sing openly of slavery or of the hope for any other freedom than that promised by the release of death : through the allegory of the Bible, he tells of his firm faith for a like deliverance from the hand of the white Pharaoh.

The chorus at Hampton sings this spiritual with an immense body of sustained tone. All in unison, without accompaniment of any kind, nine hundred voices chant the command "Go Down, Moses," like a single voice, overwhelming in dignity and power. Perhaps because of the great weight of sound, the chorus has formed the tradition of dwelling on the last note in each of the first two bars with an almost awesome solemnity. At the end of the phrase, the sudden bursting into a triumphant major chord stirs the imagination. It comes like a rift of light, like a vision of the splendor and

1 Though its origin is as yet untraced, John Wesley Work of Fisk University says that Hebrews have recognized in this Negro song a resemblance to an old Jewish Chant, "Cain and Abel," while Negroes, on their side, have identified the Hebrew song with their own "Go Down, Moses." This may be but a musical coincidence, or more probably, one of the many instances of how different peoples, influenced by analogous conditions (climatic or cultural), react artistically in similar ways to the stimulus of nature. Or, on the other hand, the incident described by Mr. Work may add emphasis to the statement in the Foreword to Book II of this series concerning the relation between Negro and Semitic cultures on the Dark Continent.

2 See refrain: "I never intend to die in Egypt Land"; also the songs "Hammering Judgment" and "Bye and Bye" (Calhoun Plantation Songs: Emily Halowell) and "Turn back Pharaoh's Army," Fisk Collection, Jubilee Singers, etc., etc. See also "Antebellum Sermon." Collected poems by Paul Lawrence Dunbar (Dodd. Mead & Co., N. Y.).