The online text of Allen's Slave Songs of the United States is here (click). It's too bad the University of North Carolind didn't provide MIDI transcriptions for those of us who can't hear a tune just by looking at the sheet music. There are many of us who would be very interested in hearing MIDI transcriptions of these tunes. I have the Dover edition of this book, and I do transcribe hundreds of tunes for Mudcat, but I don't have the time or interest to do the entire book. I can understand susan's request for a volunteer transcriber - transcribing hundreds of MIDI files is a daunting task, but some people like to do it.
I think that Susan's "Spirituals" project is a very worthwhile effort, although I disagree with her practice of posting songs by flooding Mudcat with hundreds of individual threads. I still haven't figured out how to organize them into a useable form.
If somebody want's to do the MIDIs, I'm sure we can work out a way to post them here. However, I think that Jeff and I should be consulted on how they are posted, and I will not tolerate the posting of one ADD tune thread for each song. Since the songs are available in an online document at a stable institution like the University of North Carolina, I see no need for them all to bere-posted here at Mudcat.
If somebody is doing a study of a particular song and its various versions, then it makes complete sense to post all versions of a song in a thread, along with links to MIDI files.
So, in summary, it sounds like a good idea to me - but I don't like the idea of inundating Mudcat with information that isn't organized or indexed.