Black Sacred Music / Negro Spirituals / Slave Songs

List of Songbooks and Representative Titles

Refer to the General Bibliography for full bibliographic information

 

 

“The [civil] war brought to some of us, besides its direct experiences, many a strange fulfillment of dreams of other days.  For instance, the present writer has been a faithful student of the Scottish ballads, and had always envied Sir Walter the delight of tracing them out amid their own heather, and of writing them down piecemeal from the lips of aged crones.  It was a strange enjoyment, therefore, to be suddenly brought into the midst of a kindred world of unwritten songs, as simple and indigenous the Border Minstrelsy, more uniformly plaintive, almost always more quaint, and often as essentially poetic.

 

This interest was rather increased by the fact that I had for many heard of this class of songs under the name of “Negro Spirituals,” and had even heard some of them sung by friends from South Carolina.  I could now gather on their own soil these strange plants, which I had before seen as in museums alone.”  - Thomas Wentworth Higginson in the Atlantic Monthly, June, 1867

 

 

 

“There were no successful attempts to collect any Negro songs before 1840, and early letters or articles describing Negro singing were not carefully preserved.” – John W. Work, ethnomusicologist/compiler of Spirituals, 1940

 

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“They that walked in darkness sang songs in the olden days – Sorrow Songs – for they were weary of heart.  And so before each thought that I have written in this book I have set a phrase, a haunting echo of those weird old songs in which the soul of the black slave spoke to men.  Ever since I was a child these songs have stirred me strangely.  They came out of the South unknown to me, one by one, and yet at once I knew them as of me and of mine.  Then in after years when I came to Nashville I saw the great temple builded of these songs towering over the pale city.  To me Jubilee Hall seemed every made of the songs themselves, and its bricks were red with the blood and dust of toil.  Out of them rose for me morning, noon, and night, bursts of wonderful melody, full of the voices of my brothers and sisters, full of the voices of the past.”  - W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

 

 

 

Note there is a great flurry of publication in the 1920s and 1930s, as the last people who were alive during the days of slavery and the Civil War began to reach the end of their days.  There is remarkably little overlap in the compilations.

 

1600-1870 (alleged) collection in 1997 publication: Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit, Gwendolin Sims Warren. 32 songs with lyrics and music.

 

1815 – present: HISTORICAL NOTES for SOLOS FOR TREBLE INSTRUMENT, ESPECIALLY SOPRANO RECORDER,
COLLECTION 1: AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND JAMAICAN MELODIES, a web site created and maintained by Clark Kimberling.  Contains a link to a pdf of 300 songs (most of them spirituals and other African American songs) that are put on the Internet under the Creative Commons copyright, the most non-restrictive copyright possible.   An unusual collection in that he assigns authorship to each song and provides sources for his historical notes. 

 

1850-1920: African American Sheet Music: From the Collections of Brown University, Library of Congress web site.  You can search for specific titles, and browse the list of 1,305 songs by title, subject or name of performer.

 

1867: Slave Songs of the United States, William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison.  Contains 136 songs, lyrics and music.

 

1874: Cabin and Plantation Songs as Sung by the Hampton Students, Thomas P. Fenner, Frederic G. Rathbun, Bessie Cleaveland, Musical Instructors in the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute of Virginia.  To which are added a few Indian songs, gathered at Hampton Institute, the Negroe’s Battle Hymn, and the Grace as sun at Hampton.  150 songs with lyrics and music.

 

 

 

 

1880:  The Story of the Jubilee Singers with Their Songs, J.B.T. Marsh.  100 songs, with lyrics and music.

 

 

 

1915:  Folk Song of the American Negro, John Wesley Work, A.M., Professor of Latin and History, Fisk University.  Here are about half the songs he lists:

 

 

1925: The Book of American Negro Spirituals, James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson. 61 songs with lyrics and music.

 

 

1925: Mellows: A Chronicle of Unknown Singers, R. Emmet Kennedy.   Here are about half the titles:

 

 

1925: The Negro and His Songs, Howard W. Odum, Ph.D., Guy B. Johnson, A.M., University of North Carolina. (2nd volume of a series.) About 200 songs, lyrics only.

       (The rest are grouped under the heading “Social Songs”)

     (Work Songs)

 

 

1926: Negro Workaday Songs, Howard W. Odum, Ph.D., Guy B. Johnson, A.M.  200 songs, lyrics only.

 

 

 

1927: Religious Folk-Songs of the Negro as Sung at Hampton Institute, ed. R. Nathaniel Dett, Mus. D. Hampton Institute.  150 songs with music and lyrics.

 

1933: Befo’ De War Spirituals, E.A. McIlhenny.  (The war referred to is the Civil War.)  150 songs, lyrics and music.

 

 

1940: American Negro Songs: of 230 Folk A Comprehensive Collection Songs, Religious and Secular, John W. Work.  230 songs, lyrics and music.

 

1942: Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands, Lydia Parrish.  Songs that survived from African tradition: 4; Shout songs: 12; Rng-Play, Dance and Fiddle songs: 19; Religious songs: 33; Work songs: 27.  Total 95 songs, lyrics and music.

(African songs)

(Shout songs)

(Ring-play, Dance and Fiddle songs)

(Religious songs)

(Work Songs)