Spirituals: Melody, Modes-- That SOUND

Subject: Spirituals: Melody, Modes-- That SOUND
From: wysiwyg
Date: 26 Sep 01 - 05:18 PM

OK, music theory experts. This one's for you.

What makes an African-American Spiritual a spiritual, musically? How do you know when you are hearing one, aside from the text and the possible dialect?

What's up with that SOUND?

~Susan

Subject: RE: Spirituals: Melody, Modes-- That SOUND
From: wysiwyg
Date: 26 Sep 01 - 05:31 PM

PS-- your contributions will be summarized eventually in the African-American Spirituals permathread. Before I do that I will post a draft of the summary here, for comment.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Spirituals: Melody, Modes-- That SOUND
From: wysiwyg
Date: 01 Oct 01 - 10:59 AM

Let's start with the words of those who were among the first to collect slave songs while they were still being created. These collectors found it difficult to describe what they had heard, let alone capture word or melody in transcriptions.

The following are two excerpts (edited) from Slave Songs of the United States, electronic edition, HERE. Paragraph order is mine.

~S~

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The greater number of the songs which have come into our possession seem to be the natural and original production of a race of remarkable musical capacity and very teachable, which has been long enough associated with the more cultivated race to have become imbued with the mode and spirit of European music--often, nevertheless, retaining a distinct tinge of their native Africa.

The best that we can do… will convey but a faint shadow of the original. The voices of the colored people have a peculiar quality that nothing can imitate; and the intonations and delicate variations of even one singer cannot be reproduced on paper. And I despair of conveying any notion of the effect of a number singing together, especially in a complicated shout, like "I can't stay behind, my Lord" or "Turn, sinner, turn O!"

And what makes it all the harder to unravel a thread of melody out of this strange network is that, like birds, they seem not infrequently to strike sounds that cannot be precisely represented by the gamut, and abound in slides from one note to another, and turns and cadences not in articulated notes." "It is difficult," writes Miss McKim, "to express the entire character of these negro ballads by mere musical notes and signs. The odd turns made in the throat, and the curious rhythmic effect produced by single voices chiming in at different irregular intervals, seem almost as impossible to place on the score as the singing of birds or the tones of an Æolian Harp." There are also apparent irregularities in the time, which it is no less difficult to express accurately…

There is no singing in parts, as we understand it, and yet no two appear to be singing the same thing-- the leading singer starts the words of each verse, often improvising, and the others, who "base" him, as it is called, strike in with the refrain, or even join in the solo, when the words are familiar. When the "base" begins, the leader often stops, leaving the rest of his words to be guessed at, or it may be they are taken up by one of the other singers. And the "basers" themselves seem to follow their own whims, beginning when they please and leaving off when they please, striking an octave above or below (in case they have pitched the tune too low or too high), or hitting some other note that chords, so as to produce the effect of a marvellous complication and variety, and yet with the most perfect time, and rarely with any discord.

It may sometimes be a little difficult … to determine precisely which part of the tune each verse belongs to… However much latitude the reader may take in all such matters, he will hardly take more than the negroes themselves do. In repeating, it may be observed that the custom at Port Royal is to repeat the first part of the tune over and over, it may be a dozen times, before passing to the "turn," and then to do the same with that. In the Virginia songs, on the other hand, the chorus is usually sung twice after each verse--often the second time with some such interjaculatory expression as "I say now," "God say you must." ….

It will be noticed that the words of most of the songs arrange themselves into stanzas of four lines each. Of these some are refrain, and some are verse proper. The most common arrangement gives the second and fourth lines, to the refrain, and the first and third to the verse; and in this case the third line may be a repetition of the first, or may have different words. Often, however, the refrain occupies only one line, the verse occupying the other three; while in one or two songs the verse is only one line, while the refrain is three lines in length. The refrain is repeated with each stanza: the words of the verse are changed at the pleasure of the leader, or fugleman, who sings either well-known words, or, if he is gifted that way, invents verses as the song goes on.

In addition to the stanza, some of the songs have a chorus, which usually consists of a fixed set of words, though in some of the songs the chorus is a good deal varied. The refrain of the main stanza often appears in the chorus.

As regards the tempo, most of the tunes are in 2-4 time, and in most of these [quarter note] = 100--(say)100-120.

SOURCE:
© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.

Source Description: Slave Songs of the United States. William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison xliv, 115 p. New York, A. Simpson & Co., 1867

Call Number M1670 .A42 (Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

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A gentleman in Delaware writes: "We must look among their non-religious songs for the purest specimens of negro minstrelsy, It is remarkable that they have themselves transferred the best of these to the uses of their churches--I suppose on Mr. Wesley's principle that 'it is not right the Devil should have all the good tunes.' Their leaders and preachers have not found this change difficult to effect; or at least they have taken so little pains about it that one often detects the profane cropping out, and revealing the origin of their most solemn 'hymns,' in spite of the best intentions of the poet and artist. Some of the best pure negro songs I have ever heard were those that used to be sung by the black stevedores, or perhaps the crews themselves, of the West India vessels, loading and unloading at the wharves in Philadelphia and Baltimore. I have stood for more than an hour, often, listening to them, as they hoisted and lowered the hogsheads and boxes of their cargoes; one man taking the burden of the song (and the slack of the rope) and the others striking in with the chorus. They would sing in this way more than a dozen different songs in an hour; most of which might indeed be warranted to contain 'nothing religious'--a few of them, 'on the contrary, quite the reverse'--but generally rather innocent and proper in their language, and strangely attractive in their music; and with a volume of voice that reached a square or two away. That plan of labor has now passed away, in Philadelphia at least, and the songs, I suppose, with it. So that these performances are to be heard only among black sailors on their vessels, or 'long-shore men in out-of-the-way places, where opportunities for respectable persons to hear them are rather few." These are the songs that are still heard upon the Mississippi steamboats--wild and strangely fascinating…

This, too, is no doubt the music of the colored firemen of Savannah, graphically described by Mr. Kane O'Donnel, in a letter to the Philadelphia Press, and one of which he was able to contribute for our use. Mr. E. S. Philbrick was struck with the resemblance of some of the rowing tunes at Port-Royal to the boatmen's songs he had heard upon the Nile.

SOURCE:
© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.

Source Description: Slave Songs of the United States. William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison xliv, 115 p. New York, A. Simpson & Co., 1867

Call Number M1670 .A42 (Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Subject: RE: Spirituals: Melody, Modes-- That SOUND
From: wysiwyg
Date: 04 Oct 01 - 08:49 PM

Raw material for eventual incorporation in the permathread, from Black music - anthologies

~S~

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Allen, William Francis, Charles Pickard Ware and Lucy McKim Garrison. Slave Songs of the United States. NY: Peter Smith, 1929. (orig., 1867)

This is the classic, first and most significant collection - mostly of sacred music. Many popular African-American religious songs are found here including "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" and so on. Realizing the bias of the collection and the obvious limitations of the collectors, the lack of idiommatic inflections and rhythms is understandable.

A general study of the pitch vocabularies indicates that around two-thirds of the pieces are in the major mode but only half of those include a complete heptatonic set; the others are hexatonic (no leading-tone). Only around an eighth of the songs are in the minor and none of those contain leading- tones. About the same number are pure pentatonic, mostly in plagal form. The rest are in one of three modes: mixolydian, dorian, or aeolian. Only a small number include a mixed, inflected vocabulary; either flat-3 to natural-3 or flat-7 to natural-7.

Parrish, Lydia. Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands. New York: Creative Age Press, Inc., 1942.

Twenty-five years of tune-catching produced this wonderful collection of lyrics and notated songs with thoughtful commentary.

Modern ethnoids will find many weaknesses in this collection and its methodology, but the point of its existence remains most significant. Unlike earlier collections such as Allen's Slave Songs, this contains many secular pieces. The musical notation attempts to capture both the rhythmic subtleties and the blue-note pitch inflections indigenous to the style - with mixed results. The work also contains a significant bibliography.

Subject: RE: Spirituals: Melody, Modes-- That SOUND
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 Oct 01 - 12:03 AM

The following extracted from Fenner, 1874, Preface to Music, Armstrong, Hampton and its Students.
"Half its effectiveness, in its home, depends upon accompanimants which can be carried away only in memory. The inspiration of numbers; the overpowering chorus..., the swaying of the body, the rhythmical stamping of the feet; and all the wild enthusiasm of the Negro camp- meeting-- these evidently cannot be transported to the boards of a public performance." "Improvement... effected in such pieces as "Some o' dese mornins', ... suggest possibilities of making more than has ever yet been made out of this slave music."
"Tones are frequently employed which we have no musical characters to represent. Such, for example, is that which I have indicated as nearly as possible by the flat seventh, in "Great Camp-Meetin'..." "These are variable in pitch, ranging through an entire interval...according to the inspiration of the singer."
"The best advice is...Study all the rules you please; then-- go listen to a native."
Already in 1874, Fenner noted that slave music "is rapidly passing away." He goes on to say that freedmen have "an inclination to despise it, those who learned it in the old time,,, are dying off." "If efforts are not made for its prservation, the country will soon have lost this wonderful music of bondage."
Unfortunately, effective recording of the music would not come until the end of the century, thus we have lost much of the original sound. The ring-shout was wholly lost before recording; we know of it only in a few pale echos still left in some of the 19th C. congregation music.

Subject: RE: Spirituals: Melody, Modes-- That SOUND
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 Oct 01 - 12:07 AM

Yes, I should proof read before I post. Accompaniments- I can't even pronounce it.