Thomas, thanks so much for the link to the Gellert recordings of protest songs. As far as I know, they have not been available for purchase for decades. Also, the two Gellert song collection books that you listed (Negro Songs of Protest and Me and My Captain) are extremely scarce, but I was able to borrow copies of them years ago from my local public library through "Interlibrary Loan." However, I'm not sure if these song collections are housed in libraries outside of the US.

I don't recall ever coming across the Oklahoma/Indian Nation articles. I'll definitely check them out.


Also, I want to clarify my previous post by adding that Bruce Conforth does not question the authenticity of all of the songs Gellert collected -- only the protest songs. Samuel Charters, in an essay about Gellert's songs titled The Blues' Angry Voice, also raises some doubts about Gellert's protest songs. Charters (and Conforth) suspected that the songs stemmed from political agitation by outsiders, primarily American Communists. The publisher of the song collection had ties to the Communist party and articles that he wrote about the songs also appeared in a Marxist magazine titled New Masses.

Nevertheless, Gellert's songs caused Charters to reassess his pronouncement in 1963's The Poetry Of The Blues that "There is little social protest in the blues," and look at the possibility that he had been wrong. My article is framed to a large degree around Charters and his reassessment.

Garabedian, in his book on Gellert's songs titled A Sound History, argues that the songs are authentic. Some of those who were suspicious of Gellert's songs argued that no other collectors had come up with black protest songs like those in Gellert's collection, but Garabedian's book finds a good number of parallels between protest lines and verses in Gellert's songs and protest lines/verses in black folk music and the blues that have been documented in early works on black music.