Black American ballads of 19th cent

Subject: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: Jane Bird
Date: 12 May 99 - 06:18 AM

Okay, here's another area of research I've been pursuing. I wonder if you could give me some help here too?

I've been doing some work on a documentation project at York Minster Library (in the UK), and I'm currently cataloguing a set of broadsides. I've come across several ballads which are written in what looks to me like a crude attempt to represent a black Southern American accent, and there are references to places such as Kentucky, Alabama and Lousianna. The broadsides seem to be roughly from the mid 19th century, and we even think we can date one to the 1840s.

These ballads are written on various subjects. "Clar de Kitchen" seems to be about domestic work in a kitchen. "Blue Tail Coat" is about a chap with particularly snazzy coat, and he goes round impressing people with his style. "Lucy Neal" or "Miss Lucy" is a love song.

All these songs are written as though they are sung by black Americans, in so far as they are first person narratives, and they speak in this black American accent ("de" for "the"; "ribber" for "river" &c.).

What we're wondering is:
1) Are these originally black American songs? Even if they have been altered for a 19th centuary English audience (all of the broadsides were printed in England).
2) Why was there (if this is so) a fashion for songs that feature some representation of black Americans? If they are not authentic, are these songs crass immitations or more offensive parodies?

Any ideas on this subject will be read with interest.

Cheers,
Jane

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From:
Date: 12 May 99 - 08:35 AM

There is an anthology written in 1867 of Slave Songs. They are written in "dialect" as you describe yours, so that might have been the style for representing the songs.

Of course there was minstrely--where white entertainers got themselves up in blackface and imitated black singing.

The anthology is called: "Slave Songs of the United States", by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Luch McKim Garrison. It is available as a Dover book.

Murray

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: Brian Hoskin
Date: 13 May 99 - 03:07 AM

Jane, I don't know if this is much help, but there was certainly a history of both black-face minstrelsy and black singing in nineteenth century Britain. The Fisk University Jubilee Singers toured Britain during the early 1870s, under the patronage of the Earl of Shaftesbury. They even sang for Victoria and the Prince of Wales, who was apparently familiar enough with their material to make requests. I got this information from Paul Gilroy's book 'The Black Atlantic' (1993: Verso); he cites a number of further, more detailed sources.

Brian

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: Frank in the swamps
Date: 13 May 99 - 07:05 AM

Quote from Daniel Decatur Emmett, one of the greatest composers of minstrel songs, born in 1815....

"In the composition of a 'walk around'(by this I mean the style of music and the character of the words), I have always strictly confined myself to the habits and crude ideas of the slaves of the South. Their knowledge of the world at large was very limited, often not extending beyond the bounds of the next plantation; they could sing of nothing but everyday life or occurrences, and the scenes by which they were surrounded. This being the undeniable fact, to be true to the negro peculiarities of song, I have written in accordance."

Minstrelsy was very popular on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 18th century. Eventually even black musicians were performing "minstrel" acts, going so far as to apply burnt cork to blacken their faces if they weren't black enough! Although it assumed the prejudices & stereotypes of the time, I think it does a disservice to both the black & white musicians involved to say it was simply a mockery of the slave songs. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then talented white performers were certainly scouring the plantations for what they thought were the "hottest" musical ideas of the times, and if the slave songs of the time weren't good, who'd a been listenin'?

Most of the minstrel songs I've come across (and this includes Stephen Foster's material) deal with slave emotions of a sentimental and tender order. I think, as perverse as it may seem to modern sensibilities, that blackface minstrelsy was a powerful force in the softening of white public opinion toward the Negroes. How can you deny the humanity of a people when you're laughing at the foibles of their love affairs and filial relations?

Some names to look for in your research...

Dan Emmett, Charles Matthews, George Washington Dixon, Thomas Dartmouth (Daddy Rice) Rice, Joel Walker Sweeney and E.P Christy (the "old" Christy minstrels).

Frank in the dark, dark swamps.

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: Jane Bird
Date: 13 May 99 - 09:49 AM

Thanks for all your help so far. I shall follow it up when I'm at work tomorow.

Cheers,
Jane

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: Margo
Date: 13 May 99 - 11:25 AM

I've got a surprise for you. The black southern accent (de for the, dis for this) came from ENGLAND. The black slaves would learn language from their "peers". They picked up much of their English from indentured servants from England. What I would like to know is from what area of England such an accent came.

After all, in Dr.Hamilton's journal of his 1754 journey up and down the new England coast he mentions meeting black people (from the West Indies) with as eloquent speech as one would care to hear. The blacks learning that terrible dialect had nothing to do with ability to learn language, just a matter of role models.

Could there be a Dutch or German influence (Die=the).

Margarita

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: Art Thieme
Date: 13 May 99 - 11:39 AM

John A."Tony" Scott (author of __American History In Folksong__ and the force behind the magazine __Folksong In The Classroom__) and I have been arguing/discussing precisely this topic --- specifically the song "De Massa Ob De Sheepfol'" which I recorded as "THE MASTER OF THE SHEEPFOLD" on a Folk Legacy album in the 1980s and which also is included on my recent CD.

I believe the song was originally a POEM in heavy pseudo Afro-American dialect and was the work of Sarah Pratt McLean Greene (born in Connecticut in 1856 and died in Massachusetts in 1935). John A. "Tony" Scott feels the song is British-traditional and had no Afro-American dialect at all originally. That even though it was included in the hymnal :
__THE FINEST OF THE WHEAT__
Hymns New And Old
For Missionary And Revival Meetings & Sabbath Schools
for C.C.McCabe, Jno R. Sweney, Wm. J.K. Kirkpatrick, The Whyte Brothers of Canada and F.A.Hardin
63rd edition
Edited by George D. Elderkin
CHICAGO:
R.R. McCabe & Co. publishers
1890

This book atributes the words to "Miss McLean" with a tune by J.M. Whyte.
For a printed source for:

"DE MASSA OB DE SHEEPFOL'" go here:
http://www.viemeister.com/ian/gutenberg/etext98/lbkmv10.txt

For a photo of Ms. Greene go to:
http://www.unl.edu/legacy/photogal/greene.htm

Whoever is correct (and I truly believe I am) these songs were most probably WHITE in origin. They reflected the sterotypes of that sad era. But lovingly arranged and put into modern English, these could be nice--even good and moving songs when done with respect---especially "THE MASTER OF THE SHEEPFOLD"

See the other threads on the topic of this song here at Mudcat. And thanks to Dale Rose of Arkansas for informing me about these websites!!

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: Frank in the swamps
Date: 13 May 99 - 05:04 PM

Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872-1906, a Black American poet and a very fine one at that. If you can find his work you'll see black dialect written by a black. It's a lot like Robbie Burns to me, if you don't open up your ears to the language, it just looks like bad English, but if you can really hear it....wow.

This is just an excerpt, the poem's too long for me to type, called "When Malindy Sings".

G'way an' quit dat noise, Miss Lucy-

Put dat music book away;

What's de use to keep on tryin'?

Ef you practice twell you're gray,

You cain't sta't no notes a-flyin'

Lak de ones dat rants and rings

F'om de kitchen to de big woods

When Malindy sings....

...Easy 'nough fu' folks to hallah,

Lookin' at de lines an' dots,

When dey ain't no one kin sence it,

An' de chune comes in, in spots;

But fu' real melojous music,

Dat jes' stikes yo' hea't and clings,

Jes' you stan' an' listen wif me

When malindy sings.

Frank in the "melojous" swamps.

Subject: Lyr Add: A REFRAIN OF THE RED RIVER PLANTATION^^
From: Art Thieme
Date: 13 May 99 - 05:21 PM

Also, a wonderful book on Black folk music up to the Civil War is: __SINFUL TUNES AND SPIRITUALS__ by Dena J. Epstein----University of Illinois Press 1977

Contains scholarly, accessible and fascinating discussions of songs like:
"A Refrain Of The Red River Plantation"

Harper's creek and roarin' ribber,
Thar, my dear, we'll live forebber,
Den we'll go to de Ingin nation,
All I want in dis creation,
Is pretty little wife and big plantation.

chorus: Up dat oak and down dat ribber,
Two overseers and one damn n*****.

(Described as being sung accompanied by patting. Source: Solomon Northrup _Twelve Years A Slave_ Derby and Miller, 1853 p. 337

I mean that, if you don't have it, this is the book you need to fill out much of the picture for you. Most of the lyrics here are in a dialect form.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: Art Thieme
Date: 13 May 99 - 05:25 PM

"WHEN MALINDY SINGS" was done as a song (jazz) by Abby Lincoln. One of my favorites.

Art

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: LEJ
Date: 13 May 99 - 05:31 PM

The popularity of minstrel shows and the music from them would be easy to dismiss as another aspect of slavery and repression of blacks in the US of the nineteenth century. During these Victorian times, white performers and songwriters were forced into narrow emotional constraints in public plays and concerts. Often, they were rather lifeless imitations of "high art", ie Shakespeare, Moliere,etc. They were also often lacking in entertainment value. Minstrel shows offered these same artists and performers a venue for "loosening up", due in fact to the stereotypes prevalent of blacks as natural singers, dancers, and comedians. The idea that their lives were basic and uncomplicated to an almost cartoon level, also allowed for the enactment of simple stories that nearly reached the level of allegories or morality plays. That Stephen Foster wrote both "Old Black Joe", a classic minstrel tear-jerker, and "Jeannie with the Long Brown Hair", a classic pseudo-operatic favorite of the white stage, should not be surprising. Both achieved the intended emotional impact utilizing the two most popular genres of the time.

LEJ

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: Margo
Date: 13 May 99 - 06:31 PM

I'm not quite sure what you're saying, Art. Do you mean to say that the black dialect is a white fabrication, and was not actually spoken?

Margarita

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: Art Thieme
Date: 13 May 99 - 09:43 PM

It was a parody of what was actually spoken---from my perspective. Inherent in that was all the white baggage and stereotypes. We all know the final product wasn't a close facsimile of the original. Some aproximations were better than others I suspect. Just like Amos and Andy was a certain fraction right as opposed to wrong.

As Monica might've said, "Close, but no cigar" :-)

Art

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: Frank in the swamps
Date: 14 May 99 - 04:43 PM

Good point LEJ. There's an interesting irony in the thought that the oppressors were so repressed, that they projected their own wishes & desires upon their victims.

Frank i.t.s.

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: Jane Bird
Date: 22 May 99 - 06:55 AM

Thanks again for lots more interesting leads to follow up.

What Margarita was saying about the accent is interesting. Yes, of course black slaves would have learnt their English from English speakers, but this isn't to say that they were "taught" to pronounce the th sound as d. (Parts of Ireland are the only places I can think of, where English speaker do pronounce th as d.) The th sound isn't very common in languages, as far as I understand. If you're learning English as a foreign language, and don't have the th sound already in your repetoire, it can be very difficult to pronounce. I think that's probably how that bit of the black American accent got there.

Cheers,
Jane

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: Ferrara
Date: 22 May 99 - 10:08 AM

When I was in grad school, an African girl came by the dorm for a visit one day. I think I heard she was from Senegal, but can't be sure. I do know that I noticed her for two main reasons: she had ritual scars on her cheeks, which is pretty unusual in people who visit this country, and she spoke English with a genuine Southern Accent, similar to the way my relatives from Georgia and Alabama used to talk. I commented on it, and someone said that they had heard that the American "southern" accent may have been learned from the slave nannies, nurses and caretakers that raised many Southern children, and that it was the natural cadences of certain African-language speakers when they learned English.

Well, I don't know what to make of this, but having heard that girl's soft, drawling speech I tend to feel there's at least a germ of truth in the theory.

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 May 01 - 11:27 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Black American ballads of 19th cent
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 13 May 01 - 11:33 PM

Art et al- I don't think that the dialect used in minstrel shows etc. was a parody--I think it was a fairly reasonable representation of the dialects that were actually spoken. And are still spoken, in some poorer black neighborhoods.