Page:Natalie Curtis - Negro Folk-Songs Book 1.djvu/6

 melodies have been more or less traditional at Hampton throughout the fifty years of the life of the school; yet the voice-progressions and even the versions of the melodies are strikingly individual with different singers. All around the grounds at Hampton the visitor comes across little groups of students singing together under the trees, or humming harmonies to one anothers' songs as they go to their work at the shops or in the fields. Music is literally "in the air." When I asked a newcomer from a remote district what part he sang in the "Spirituals" chanted by the whole school in Chapel on Sunday evenings, he answered naïvely: "O, sometimes I sings sopranner, an' sometimes I sings bay-uss; all depen's on de lay o' de song an' on how I feels." The enormous chorus of nine hundred Negro voices singing by nature, not by training; by ear and heart, and not by note; in perfect pitch, without accompaniment; each singer, no matter where he sits, taking any part he chooses in the harmonies of the whole—this chorus of folk-singers is among the most wonderful products of the United States!

Through leaving unspoiled this fresh, intuitive song-impulse in the Negro, and through cherishing the old music in its original purity and simplicity, Hampton has glorified the song of the slave as it has dignified the manual labor of the freedman, and is preserving in living form that spontaneous musical utterance which is the Negro's priceless contribution to the art of America.

Negro dialect is used in these notations, for to sing these typical Negro songs in words from which have been expunged the racial and picturesque quality seems as colorless, inartistic and unnatural as to sing Scotch or Irish ballads in anything but the vernacular, or German and French folk-songs in other than their own quaint and simple verse.

In trying to sing Negro dialect, white people should bear in mind that it is primarily a legato form of speech. The African languages of Bantu stock (from which great linguistic family came, probably, most of our American Negroes) are soft and musical in spite of the "clicks" in some of them; so that the transplanted Negro instinctively modified harsher sounds in English, sliding words together and leaving out whole syllables. "Th" being a difficult sound*for most people not born to it, becomes "D" to the black man, but the vowels that follow should be pronounced as the white man pronounces them. For instance, "the," commonly spoken "thuh," is called by the Negro "duh" or "d'" not "dee." This should especially be borne in mind by white singers. For the sake of clarity I have adhered to the customary methods of dialect spelling except in a few cases where this seemed inadequate. To give to the verses the rhythm as sung, I have stressed the syllables accented by the music.

In singing four-part harmonies for male voices, the Hampton singers divide as follows: tenor (usually a very high voice); "lead" (or leader — who carries the melody); baritone, and bass. The Negroes say that in form their old songs usually consist in what they call "Chorus and Verses." The "Chorus," a melodic refrain sung by all, opens the song; then follows a verse sung as a solo, in free recitative; the chorus is repeated; then another verse; chorus again;— and so on until the chorus, sung for the last time, ends the song.

These songs, now traditional, were originally extemporaneous. They sprang into life as the expression of an emotion, of an experience, of a hope. The verses were made up as the occasion called for them — and a song was