SONGS OF FREEDOM Benjamin Rous, conductor Amber Garrett, soprano Gregory Gardner, bass
Cassandra Newby-Alexander, Ph.D. Maureen Elgersman Lee, Ph. D.
William Grant Still
Symphony No.1, “Afro-American Symphony” III. Humor: Animato
Henry Burleigh / Powers
Deep River Gregory Gardner, bass
Traditional / Curnow
Freedom Rhapsody (Follow the Drinking Gourd)
Traditional / Kelley
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
Traditional / Hayes
Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel? Amber Garrett, soprano Gregory Gardner, bass
INTERMISSION
Traditional / Gould
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot Amber Garrett, soprano
Traditional / Weisheit
Wade in the Water
Traditional / Elliott
Three Spirituals (Steal Away, Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, Joshua Fit De Battle of Jerico)
Traditional / Rous
Go Down Moses Amber Garrett, soprano
William Grant Still
Symphony No.1, “Afro-American Symphony” IV. Aspiration: lento; con risoluzione
This program was supported by a grant from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
Cassandra Newby-Alexander is a professor of history and interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Norfolk State University. She is also the director of the Joseph Jenkins Roberts Center for African Diaspora Studies and has received grants to support her various projects totaling over $650,000. Some of her publications included Virginia Waterways and the Underground Railroad (History Press, 2017), An African American History of the Civil War in Hampton Roads (History Press, 2010), “Vivian Carter Mason: The Community Feminist,” in Virginia Women: Their Lives and Times (University of Georgia Press, 2016), and “Malcolm X,” in The American Middle Class: An Economic Encyclopedia of Progress and Poverty (Greenwood Press, 2017). Dr. Newby-Alexander has also appeared on a number of national programs, including C-SPAN3 with Richmond Civil War Museum’s 1865 Person of the Year program “The Freedmen,” Colonial Williamsburg’s Electronic Fieldtrip When Freedom Came, the Emmy winning Henry Louis Gates 2013 series Many Rivers to Cross, Talk of the Nation in 1998, Tavis Smiley Presents: The African American Imprint on America program, and C-SPAN’s 2010 Virginia Sesquicentennial Conference’s “Race, Slavery, and the Civil War: The Tough Stuff of American History.”
Maureen Elgersman Lee is Associate Professor of History and Chair of the Department of Political Science and History at Hampton University. A native of Ontario, Canada, Dr. Elgersman Lee holds a bachelor’s degree in French from Redeemer University Colege and master’s and doctoral degrees in African American Studies from Clark Atlanta University. She teaches, researches, and publishes on various topics, including the histories of Black women in Canada and the British Caribbean, and of Black communities in the United States.
A native of Norfolk, Virginia, Gregory Gardner has performed locally, nationally, and internationally in opera, musical theater, oratorio, and concert productions. The baritone has sung roles as varied as Tom in the New York Pops staging of Gershwin’s Blue Monday at Carnegie Hall; Figaro in the Fayetteville Summer Opera production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro; Elijah in the North of England Festival Choir’s production of Mendelssohn’s Elijah; John Lewis in Tony Award winner George Faison’s musical If This Hat Could Talk; and Jim and Jake in the Virginia Opera production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. He has performed with the Virginia Symphony, Huntington Symphony, and the symphonies of Hampton University and Old Dominion University. He studied voice at Howard University earning the Bachelor and Master of Music degrees; he also studied at Chautauqua Institute, Academie Maurice Ravel in St. Jean-de-Luz, France, and AIMS in Graz, Austria. Currently he teaches voice at Norfolk State University. Amber Patrice Garrett, native of Norfolk, Virginia. began her singing career at the tender age of four with performances in her church and she continued to amaze the community as she shared her God-given vocal gift throughout her childhood. Amber’s formal music training initiated in the Department of Music at Hampton University, Hampton, Va. where she was a member of the Concert Choir and a featured soloist on its crosscountry tour. After completing requirements for the Bachelor of Arts degree in Music, she continued her pursuit of excellence at The Boston Conservatory of Music where she earned the Master of Music Degree in Voice Performance in 2012. Ms. Garrett’s accomplishments are diverse and noteworthy. She performed on the TODAY Television Show shortly after receiving her undergraduate degree. During her graduate studies Amber sang in Master Classes for International Artist such as Denyce Graves and Christine Brewer.
Long known as the “Dean of African-American Classical Composers,” as well as one of America’s foremost composers, William Grant Still has had the distinction of becoming a legend in his own lifetime. On May 11, 1895, he was born in Woodville (Wilkinson County) Mississippi, to parents who were teachers and musicians. They were of Negro, Indian, Spanish, Irish and Scotch bloods. When William was only a few months old, his father died and his mother took him to Little Rock, Arkansas, where she taught English in the high school. There his musical education began--with violin lessons from a private teacher, and with later inspiration from the Red Seal operatic recordings bought for him by his stepfather. In Wilberforce University, he took courses leading to a B.S. degree, but spent most of his time conducting the band, learning to play the various instruments involved and making his initial attempts to compose and to orchestrate. His subsequent studies at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music were financed at first by a legacy from his father, and later by a scholarship established just for him by the faculty. At the end of his college years, he entered the world of commercial (popular) music, playing in orchestras and orchestrating, working in particular with the violin, cello and oboe. In the Twenties, Still made his first appearances as a serious composer in New York, and began a valued friendship with Dr. Howard Hanson of Rochester. In 1944, he won the Jubilee prize of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for the best Overture to celebrate its Jubilee season, with a work called Festive Overture. In 1953, a Freedoms Foundation Award came to him for his To You, America! which honored West Points Sesquicentennial Celebration. In 1961, he received the prize offered by the U. S. Committee for the U. N., the N.F.M.C. and the Aeolian Music Foundation for his orchestral work, The Peaceful Land, cited as the best musical composition honoring the United Nations. Dr. Still’s service to the cause of brotherhood is evidenced by his many firsts in the musical realm: Still was the first Afro-American in the United States to have a symphony performed by a major symphony orchestra. He was the first to conduct a major symphony orchestra in the United States, when in 1936, he directed the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in his compositions at the Hollywood Bowl. He was the first Afro-American to conduct a major symphony orchestra in the Deep South in 1955, when he directed the New Orleans Philharmonic at Southern University. He was the first of his race to conduct a White radio orchestra in New York City. He was the first to have an opera produced by a major company in the United States, when in 1949, his Troubled Island was done at the City Center of Music and Drama in New York City. He was the first to have an opera televised over a national network. With these firsts, Still was a pioneer, but, in a larger sense, he pioneered because he was able to create music capable of interesting the greatest conductors of the day: truly serious music, but with a definite American flavor. Still wrote over 150 compositions (well over 200 if his lost early works could be counted), including operas, ballets, symphonies, chamber works, and arrangements of folk themes, especially Negro spirituals, plus instrumental, choral and solo vocal works.
Harry Thacker Burleigh played a significant role in the development of American art song, having composed over two hundred works in the genre. He was the first African-American composer acclaimed for his concert songs as well as for his adaptations of African-American spirituals. In addition, Burleigh was an accomplished baritone, a meticulous editor, and a charter member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, on December 2, 1866, Burleigh received his first music training from his mother. After discovering Burleigh’s musical talent, Elizabeth Russell, a bank messenger who was his mother’s employer, gave the youth a job as a doorman at the musicales she hosted in her home. This afforded Burleigh the opportunity to hear guest performers such as Teresa Carreño and Italo Campanini. Although he had no formal training, his talent as a singer led to employment as a soloist in several Erie churches and synagogues. In 1892, at the age of twenty-six, Burleigh received a scholarship (with some intervention in his behalf from Mrs. Frances MacDowell, mother of famed American composer Edward MacDowell) to the National Conservatory of Music in New York where he studied with Christian Fritsch, Rubin Goldmark, John White, and Max Spicker. The years Burleigh spent at the Conservatory greatly influenced his career, mostly due to his association and friendship with Antonín Dvorák, the Conservatory’s director. After spending countless hours recalling and performing the African-American spirituals and plantation songs he had learned from his maternal grandfather for Dvorák, Burleigh was encouraged by the elder composer to preserve these melodies in his own compositions. In turn, Dvorák’s use of the spirituals “Goin’ Home” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in his Symphony no. 9 in E minor (“From the New World”) was probably influenced by his sessions with Burleigh. In addition, Burleigh served as copyist for Dvorák, a task that prepared him for his future responsibilities as a music editor. In 1894, Burleigh auditioned for the post of soloist at St. George’s Episcopal Church of New York. To the consternation of the congregation, which objected because Burleigh was black, he was given the position. However, through his talent and dedication (he held the appointment for over fifty years, missing only one performance during his tenure), Burleigh won the hearts and the respect of the entire church community. Personally and professionally, the next several years were productive ones for Burleigh. In 1898, he married poet Louise Alston; a son, Alston, was born the following year. That same year, G. Schirmer published his first three songs. In 1900, Burleigh was the first African-American chosen as soloist at Temple Emanu-El, a New York synagogue, and by 1911 he was working as an editor for music publisher G. Ricordi. His success was enhanced through the publication of several of his compositions, including “Ethiopia Saluting the Colors” (1915), a collection entitled Jubilee Songs of the USA (1916), and his arrangement of “Deep River” (1917), for which he is best remembered.
LOOKING BACK African-American enslaved communities in the American South preserved and communicated their experiences, culture, and history through oral traditions. Forbidden to read or write, these communities expressed themselves through music. Spirituals provided those enslaved with a sense of hope and unity, but many sources claim they also served a more secretive purpose: to help covertly communicate messages and directions about when, where, and how to escape. For example, many sources argue that “Follow the Drinking Gourd” was actually a metaphor for the Big Dipper and was used by operatives of the Underground Railroad to direct slaves north from Mobile, Alabama to the Ohio River and then north to freedom. But to overemphasize the role spirituals may have played in the Underground Railroad risks oversimplification. Each song tells a unique story about the life and culture of enslaved African Americans. This music has survived history to preserve and communicate a shared experience from a time when other forms of documentation were suppressed. So what do we really know about the origins of spirituals? How and why did they emerge? AFRICAN AMERICAN SPIRITUALS By Cassandra Newby-Alexander Professor of History, Norfolk State University African American music that includes spirituals, work songs, blues, gospel, jazz, rhythm ‘n blues, rap, and hip hop all tell a history. They symbolically reflect actions and attitudes of resiliency, improvisation, yearning and confrontation, which have defined the experiences of Africans in America and the evolution of African American culture. This music tradition helped African Americans endure the cruelties of slavery, segregation, discrimination, and systematic inhumane treatment while simultaneously providing a medium for communion, celebration, resiliency, and communication. Continuing the cultural expressions from Africa and adapting them to the new realities in America created a sense of community with its inclusive participatory elements that illustrated their unique consciousness and worldview. In 2019, it will be 400 years since the English forcibly brought Africans to America to work under the most degrading, backbreaking, and hopeless conditions. Ironically, out of these conditions emerged a unique musical tradition that, while its threads can be traced to West Africa, had fundamental expressions which were molded from the harsh realities of life in America for the descendants of West Africans brought to this country to work as slaves. African American spirituals, while unique in its form and expression because of its association with the culture of slaves, embraced West African principles of melodic structure, musical concepts, and dance because music and dancing were an inseparable concept of religious expression and rites of passage.
Music was a central, living element in their daily expression and activities. So it was that African American music, like African music, was an engaging social practice where audience and performer were expected to interact both orally and with physical gestures. The complex rhythmic patterns of the instruments and voice prompted the listeners to respond through body movement such as foot stomping or hand clapping. The predominance of percussion in the West African music tradition, with its overlapping of the call and response pattern, and the off-beat phrasing of melodic accents (resembling syncopation in jazz) remained an important African American musical element. And similar to the West African traditions of borrowing cultural elements from others and fusing them with their own, Africans in American took the European music that was more complex harmonically than theirs and blended it with their more complex rhythmic structure. The result was that several traditional Negro spirituals have the melody of West African songs. West African music of a non-ceremonial type included work, hunting, social commentary (gossip and satirical), entertainment and instructional songs. As an agricultural people, West Africans had many varieties of work songs associated with planting and harvest, food preparation, etc. And wherever there was music, especially ceremonial music, there was dancing, hand clapping, and musical accompaniments with drums, flutes, bells and trumpets. African songs dealt with the same issues as the folktales in America: religion, love, war, hunting, birth, death, drinking and work. Moreover, African Americans continued the West African tradition that borrowed cultural elements from others, fusing them with their own. Folklorists have identified how West African singing styles, characterized by high intensity and use of falsetto, shouting and guttural tones, survived in America. Alternation of improvised lines and fixed refrains were the most constant feature of most African songs. The soloist sang the verses and the group sang the fixed refrains. Thus the term “call and response� describes the responsive or antiphonal nature of African song performance. The song had a continuous repetition of a single melody sung alternately by the song leader and the group. Onlookers participated by clapping with the palms of their hands and/or tapping their feet. They would also shout words of encouragement to the performers. Essentially, there was no audience because all were actively involved in the music-dance performance in one way or another. Exceptions were in music performed in connection with rites of birth, marriage and death. When the Great Awakening, a religious revival movement, spread toward the South beginning in the 1780s, the large presence of African Americans brought a demand for livelier music in worship services. As African cultural practices merged with European sacred music, new musical traditions emerged known as spirituals. These new songs were hymns and religious poems instead of the scriptural psalms. Psalm tunes were changed or improvised, sometimes because people may have forgotten the words or tune. The use of instruments, hand clapping, and call and response singing began to define congregations that included African Americans. While attending the camp meetings during the Great Awakening, African Americans introduced musical practices that combined lyric poems in the European tradition with isolated lines from prayers, the Scriptures, and orthodox hymns. Antiphonal singing, the singing of psalms in alternation by the men and women, the African-style heart-rending, moaning and loudness of the singing became the standard.
The shout and the inclusion of percussion instruments in worship also became trademarks in black churches. Thus, in the period following the American Revolution the world witnessed the birth of modern black church singing practices. The evolution of the musical tradition of spirituals during these camp meetings that also included some form of dancing cannot be understated. It was in these camp meeting hymns that the West African traditions of intermixing dance and music were allowed full expression. Song leaders added choruses and refrains to official hymns to make an interactive song with the audience. They also introduced new songs with repetitive phrases and catchy tunes. Distinctive features were the chorus, folksong-style melodies, and rough and irregular couplets filled with scriptural references and everyday experiences. Generally, the gathering divided itself into two groups: the shouters (or dancers) and the singers. Often the shouters would participate in the singing, depending upon how they felt, and sometimes they sang only refrains of the song. The emergence of the “shout” tradition, the shuffling of the feet, came from the English colonists’ rule that dancing was forbidden in religious services. Dancing was defined as crossing the feet or lifting the feet from the ground. Since dance was an integral part in West African religious activity, it is not surprising that African Americans would integrate that tradition into their religious practices once they were beyond the supervision of whites. More than 1,000 spirituals evolved during the period of African American slavery, fusing dignity and strength with the belief in spiritual and actual freedom. For many, these songs became personal testaments to the trials and hardships of daily life: a personal “valley” which each individual would have to walk alone. And as African Americans formed their own churches either as independent entities (e.g., the A.M.E. Church) or as black congregations joined white denominations, these spirituals became the basis for singing practices and songs and were included in the hymnals. Some of the songs that emerged from the camp meeting traditions included “Down by the River Side,” “My Soul is a Witness for My Lord,” “Wheel in a Wheel,” “Done Got on Board de Glory Train,” “Just Like a Tree Planted by the Water,” “When Peace Like a River Pervadeth My Soul,” “Nearer My God to Thee,” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” These spirituals would have a multifaceted role in African American culture until the present. In the early years, spirituals were an expression of their religious fervor framed within the West African and American traditions and culture. Perhaps their most enduring quality was the relevance they had to African Americans. The messages in the songs were not exclusively religious. Many of the spirituals emphasized deliverance and escape: slaves were always walking, riding, sailing, climbing or crossing over into Canaan. Many spoke directly to the slaves’ longing for freedom:
I’se gwine on er journey, tell yo’, I hyar yo’ be better go ’long; I’se gwine fer de kingdom, tell yo’, I hyar yo’ better go ‘long. O blow, blow, ole Massa, blow de cotton horn, Ole Jim’ll neber wuck no mo’ in de cotton an’ de corn.
By the antebellum period, as resistance to slavery emerged as a national movement with the birth of national antislavery societies and the formation of the Underground Railroad, spirituals came to serve another purpose. Frederick Douglass and many other runaway slaves attested to the inspiration they received to risk life and limb for the sake of freedom after listening to spirituals. As many slaves plotted their escape, they would disguise their plans through the words of the spirituals. In other cases, the songs alerted slaves that a “conductor” was on the way to lead them to freedom. Songs such as Steal Away to Jesus; Brother Moses Gone to de Promised Land; Good News, de Chariot’s Coming; and Oh, Sinner, You’d Better Get Ready were standard “alerting” songs. Then there were directional songs that served as “maps” such as Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd, which directed runaways to travel in the direction of the Big Dipper (the North Star). And while the spirituals revealed the slave’s attitude about conditions of life, like most sacred songs they were reflective of religious concepts. During the Civil War, U.S. soldiers and missionaries who came to Union-held areas, such as in the Fort Monroe area collected many of these regional songs. For example, freedom seeker George Washington Fields from Hanover County, Virginia wrote his autobiography shortly after the war and included his recollections of songs that enslaved people sang reflecting their definitions of freedom during the war. One such song, “Oh Freedom,” intoned, “And before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave, And go home to my Lord and be Free.” Another song celebrating freedom said, “Slavery chain done broke at last, Broke at last, Broke at last, Praise God till I die.” The African American spiritual is one of the largest and most significant musical traditions in America. Although it is associated with slavery and the travails of the millions of people whose lives were part of this inhumane system that dominated the American landscape and defined America, spirituals should be viewed primarily as an affirmation of life and the attitudes of each member of that collective group. And while it includes stories of struggle and pain, the primary message is aspirational, with a focus on freedom, liberty, family, and a hope of finding joy after death. Selected Bibliography Engs, Robert F. Freedom’s First Generation: Black Hampton, Virginia, 1861-1890. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004. Epstein, Dena. Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. Holloway, Joseph, ed. Africanisms in American Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990, 1991. Levine, Lawrence. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought From Slavery to Freedom.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Silverman, Jerry. Traditional Black Music: Songs of Protest and Civil Rights. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1992. Silverman, Jerry. Traditional Black Music: Work Songs. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1994. Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americas: A History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1971. The Negro in Virginia. Compiled by Workers of the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Virginia. Winson-Salem, NC: John Blair Publishers, 1994; original publication New York: Hastings House, 1940.
LOOKING FORWARD Today, spirituals remain ubiquitous in our society, and though the lyrics exist in many forms, Americans from all backgrounds know them by heart as part of our national culture. Indeed, they have transcended our borders and become a global phenomenon. What was once an oral tradition has become carefully codified and popularized, featured in church services, movie soundtracks, and concert halls alike. They have also been reinvented and repurposed to address modern inequities and struggles as music continues to be a vehicle for social commentary and empowerment. Spirituals preserve our past, unite us in the present, and give us hope for the future. How has this evolution changed spirituals, and what has stayed the same? How can we as performers honor these traditions with deference, retaining the integrity of the original music while exploring new possibilities and meanings in our modern world? PERFORMING OUR EXPERIENCE: African American Spirituals and Historically Black Colleges Dr. Maureen Elgersman Lee Hampton University We have this wonderful folk music—the melodies of an enslaved people, who poured out their longings, their griefs, and their aspirations in the one great, universal language. – R. Nathaniel Dett In the collection of Hampton University, one finds an 1874 photograph with the caption, “Hampton Singers Who Gave a Performance in Virginia Hall.” Taken less than a decade after the 1868 founding of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University), the photo shows sixteen well-attired young men and women seated for the photographer. Similar in appearance and era to photos of peers like the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the Hampton Institute photo shows singers who had already begun travelling to various states to “sing up” their campus. As ambassadors of their race, of their music, and of their institution, Hampton Singers would ultimately tour nationally and internationally, raising thousands of dollars towards building the campus and growing the endowment. The repertoires of schools like Hampton, Fisk, Tuskegee, Howard, Spelman, and Morehouse, all of whom had ensembles that toured broadly, included songs such as “My Lord Delivered Daniel,” “Go Down Moses,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Steal Away to Jesus,” “My Brothers, Don’t Get Weary,” and “Keep Me From Sinking Down.” Spirituals were songs of deep human sorrow and pain, and of seasoned Christian faith and hope that were passed down orally over time, distance, and generations.
After slavery was constitutionally removed from American popular life, spirituals were transformed in two different, but related, ways. They were codified and they were performed. The codification of spirituals took place through a series of events that centered on the standardization of lyrics and musical arrangements. Committing the oral tradition to paper allowed spirituals to be printed and distributed widely. The codification of spirituals was not fixed, however, as choirs, conductors, and composers would all further modify the spirituals, reworking them over time in various solo, choral, symphonic, and operatic arrangements. The performance of spirituals, whether via solos, small groups, or large choirs, transformed the essence of spirituals as well. Rather than continuing as organic narratives of immediate, personal experience, spirituals became testimonies of people’s shared loss and survival. The “double-coded” lyrics of escape from slavery and reward in Heaven were no longer hidden. Over time and generations, spirituals became further removed from actual lived experience of their singers and moved closer to being the confirmation of a larger cultural, regional, national, and international legacy of resilience and spiritual grit. The first-generation spirituals that were created and individualized in the experience of slavery gave way to new generations of spirituals that paid homage to a people who, historically, have lived by faith (not by sight) and to their God who did not forsake. In the 20th century, spirituals continued to have new applications as lynching, segregation, voter suppression, stereotyping, and public policy, required Blacks to mine the deep veins of spiritual grit and resilience of the past. To the student of history, it is entirely fitting, and not just a little ironic, that one of the foremost composers and conductors in the history of the performance of African American spirituals, was from Canada. R. Nathaniel Dett was born in 1882, in Drummondville, Ontario, a small Canadian border town that only a generation before symbolized the sociopolitical battle over slavery and its interests waged between Canada and the United States. Dett was descended from Black freedom-seekers, some of the very ones who “stole away” to Canada. According to various published sources, Dett credited his grandmother with singing spirituals, even though her grandchildren, who had been educated in predominantly-white, northern schools, found them to be culturally foreign, and even primitive. R. Nathaniel Dett, like other notable performers, composers, conductors, and arrangers, took public awareness and appreciation of the African American spiritual tradition to new heights. R. Nathaniel Dett (Hampton), William L. Dawson (Tuskegee), George White (Fisk), their predecessors, successors, and peers helped tell the story of the spiritual as performance, over the decades they spent at their respective institutions, developing the songs, and, thereby, honoring their largely anonymous folk authors. Choirs travelled the country and the world mesmerizing audiences with their passion, depth, and range. Composers and conductors mixed folk, classical, and symphonic elements to create arrangements uniquely their own. Dett and his contemporaries also found themselves embroiled in a larger cultural debate about the true nature of spirituals and how they should be preserved in performance.
Should spirituals be confined to traditional delivery as sorrow songs that appeal to audiences’ appetite for an imagined African primitivism or is there a higher professional duty to, as Dett wrote, “fashion from it music which will prove that we, too, have national feelings and characteristics as have the European peoples whose forms we have zealously followed for too long.” This was the social value of spirituals that Dett appealed to and spent his career both codifying and elevating in performance. African American spirituals were created out of the lived experience of slavery. After emancipation and in the early 20th century, they became highly identified with African American colleges and universities who used them as calling cards to open doors of institutional progress and educational empowerment. Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century, spirituals remain a hallmark of musical performance at many Black colleges and universities, invoking a shared racial history and serving as conduits to showcase the immense, innovative range of the institutions’ directors and ensembles. Selected Bibliography Barrett, Harris. “Negro Folk So––ngs.” The Southern Workman. Volume 41, no. 4 (April 1912): 238-245.
https://archive.org/details/southernworkman01unkngoog. Accessed January 6, 2018.
Floyd, Samuel A., Jr. The Power of Black Music: Interpreting its History from Africa to the United States.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
“Hampton singers who gave a performance in Virginia Hall” (Photograph), 1874, University Archives at Hampton University.
Digital Library of Hampton University, HBCU Library Alliance.
http://hbcudigitallibrary.auctr.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/hamu/id/57/rec/25. Accessed December 28, 2017.
Katz, Bernard, ed. The Social Implications of Early Negro Music in the United States.
New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969.
Keillor, Elaine. “Writing for a Market: Canadian Musical Composition before the First World War.” Sheet Music from Canada’s Past.
Library and Archives Canada. March 29, 2001.
https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/sheetmusic/028008-3200-e.html. Accessed January 6, 2018.
“Nathaniel Dett.” Historica Canada. http://www.blackhistorycanada.ca/profiles. Accessed December 28, 2017. Odum, Howard W., and Guy B. Johnson. The Negro and His Songs: A Study of Typical Negro Songs in the South. 2d reprint ed.
Westport, Connecticut: Negro Universities Press, 1925.
“R. Nathaniel Dett 1882-1943.” Library of Congress.
https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200038840/. Accessed December 28, 2017.
Schenbeck, Lawrence. Racial Uplift and American Music, 1878-1943. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2012. Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans: A History. 3d ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1997. Spencer, Jon Michael. Re-searching Black Music. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996. Spencer, Jon Michael. The New Negroes and Their Music: The Success of the Harlem Renaissance.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997.
Deep River
Follow the Drinking Gourd
Deep river, my home is over Jordan, Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground. Lord, I want to cross over into campground, Lord, I want to cross over into campground, Lord, I want to cross over into campground, Lord.
Follow the drinking gourd, Follow the drinking gourd. For the old man is a waiting For to carry you to freedom, Follow the drinking gourd.
Oh, chillun, Oh, don’t you want to go to that gospel feast, That promised land, that land where all is peace? Walk into heaven, and take my seat, And cast my crown at Jesus feet. Lord, I want to cross over into campground, Lord, I want to cross over into campground, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.
When the sun comes up And the first quail calls, Follow the drinking gourd. For the old man is a waiting For to carry you to freedom, Follow the drinking gourd. Follow the drinking gourd, Follow the drinking gourd. For the old man is a waiting, For to carry you to freedom, Follow the drinking gourd. The riverbank will make a mighty good road, The dead trees show you the way. Left foot, peg foot traveling on, Following the drinking gourd. Follow the drinking gourd, Follow the drinking gourd. For the old man is a waiting For to carry you to freedom, Follow the drinking gourd. The river ends between two hills, Follow the drinking gourd. There’s another river on the other side, Follow the drinking gourd. Follow the drinking gourd, Follow the drinking gourd. For the old man is a waiting For to carry you to freedom, Follow the drinking gourd.
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child Swing Low, Sweet Chariot Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, A long ways from home. A long ways from home. True believer, A long ways from home. Along ways from home. Sometimes I feel like I’m almos’ gone, Sometimes I feel like I’m almos’ gone, Sometimes I feel like I’m almos’ gone, Way up in de heab’nly land. Way up in de heab’nly land. True believer, Way up in de heab’nly land. Way up in de heab’nly land. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, A long ways from home. There’s praying everywhere. Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel? Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel, Deliver Daniel, deliver Daniel? Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel, And why not a-every man?
Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home. Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home. I looked over Jordan and what did I see, Coming for to carry me home. A band of angels coming after me, Coming for to carry me home. If you get there before I do, Coming for to carry me home. Tell all my friends I’m coming to, Coming for to carry me home. Wade in the Water Wade in the water, Wade in the water, children, Wade in the water, God’s a-going to trouble the water. See that host all dressed in white, God’s a-going to trouble the water. The leader looks like the Israelite, God’s a-going to trouble the water. See that band all dressed in red, God’s a-going to trouble the water. Looks like the band that Moses led, God’s a-going to trouble the water.
He deliver’d Daniel from de lion’s den, Jonah from de belly of de whale, Look over yonder, what do you see? And the Hebrew children from the fiery furnace, God’s a-going to trouble the water. And why not a-every man? The Holy Ghost a-coming on me, God’s a-going to trouble the water. I see my foot on the gospel ship, And the ship, it begin to sail. If you don’t believe I’ve been redeemed, It landed me over on Canaan’s shore, God’s a-going to trouble the water. And I’ll never come back any more. Just follow me down to the Jordan’s stream, God’s a-going to trouble the water.
Steal Away Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus, Steal away, steal away home. I ain’t got long to stay here. My Lord, He calls me, He calls me by the thunder. The trumpet sounds within-a my soul, I ain’t got long to stay here. Steal away, steal away home. I ain’t got long to stay here. Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen Nobody knows de trouble I’ve seen, Nobody knows de trouble but Jesus. Nobody knows de trouble I’ve seen, Glory Hallelujah! Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down, Oh, yes, Lord! Sometimes I’m almost to de groun’, Oh, yes, Lord! Nobody knows de trouble I’ve seen, Nobody knows de trouble but Jesus. Nobody knows de trouble I’ve seen, Glory Hallelujah!
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Joshua Fit De Battle of Jerico Joshua fit de battle ob Jerico, Jerico, Jerico. Joshua fit de battle ob Jerico, An’ de walls come tumblin’ down! You may talk about yo’ king ob Gideon, You may talk about yo’ man ob Saul. Dere’s none like good ole Joshua, At de battle ob Jerico! Up to de walls ob Jerico, He marched with spear in han’. “Go blow dem ram horns”, Joshua cried, “Kase de battle am in my han’!” Den de lam’ ram sheep begin to blow, Trumpets begin to soun’. Joshua commanded de children to shout, An’ de walls come tumblin’ down! Dat mornin’! Joshua fit the battle ob Jerico, Jerico, Jerico. Joshua fit de battle ob Jerico, An’ de walls come tumblin’ down! Go Down Moses When Israel was in Egypt’s land, Let my people go! Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let my people go! Go down Moses, Way down in Egypt land. Tell old Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” “Thus spoke the Lord” bold Moses said, Let my people go! “If not I’ll smite your first born dead,” Let my people go! “No more in bondage shall they toil,” Let my people go! “Let them come out with Egypt’s spoil,” Let my people go!