Hi Azizi,

In response to:

"I am interested in knowing whether you think it is appropriate and/or important to include information that is known about the racial/ethnic origin of folk songs"

I think it is vitally important. The African-American culture is a strong element in American music. There are certain phenotypical as well as genotypical and anthropological elements that need to be identified. These elements influence musical style, scale selection and rhythm choices. (For example, African-American scales tend to flat the seventh note of a blues scale whereby the Appalachian singing style tends to sharpen that note. The flatted third, seventh and fifth notes of the blues scale have African origins.)

In general, African-American singing styles tend to be physicalized more than the stationary stance by Appalachian or Anglo-American folk singers. Much of African-American music is dance oriented. The "beat" is always there.

The facial construction of singers make a difference in vocal quality and tone production. This is a factor in musical choices in style. I had a long drawn-out discussion about this with Alan Lomax who took the "blank slate" approach that all African-American musical styles were cultural. I disagreed. I think they are "phenotypical" involving physical characteristics.

Case in point regarding singing: There has never been a Caucasion singer who could emulate Mahalia Jackson's unique gospel style successfully. That could also be applied
to Leadbelly or Ironhead Baker as well.

The aforementioned points in no way suggest that these characteristics are part of cases. There will always be discrepancies to any trend.

It is extremely important to chase down cultural and phenotypical aspects of African-American music just as it was deemed important to evaluate and analyze European so-called "Classical" music.

Secular African-American music such as Blues in its divergent categories from field holler to be-bop, Piedmont style finger picking on guitar, bottle-neck and knife-teasing guitar styles, cabaret belting from the cat-house New Orleans days, ragtime piano and the "perfessers" such as Morton, Joplin, Johnson etc..Jazz singers and blues shouters such as Ella, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Victoria Spivey, Trixie Smith, Chippie Hill, Alberta Hunter, Ma Rainey and others, early pre-Presley rockers (rock and roll being another euphemism from the "jass" days), work related chain-gang and field hollers, bamboo pan pipes, unique banjo and fiddle playing styles, drum bands, and the development of wind instruments from the end of the Civil War in the hands of African-American musicians all have a bearing on defining African-American music. The knowledge of these roots and tributaries are so important to define what we know as American music.

Secular African-American music and its impact on Anglo-American string band music including bluegrass is important here. Also, its influence in the questionable Minstrel show tradition.

Certainly overlapping of cultures take place in music but I think it's important to know how and from where the overlapping began.

Frank Hamilton