Slave Songs of the United States

by Charles Pickard Ware, Lucy McKim Garrison, William Francis Allen

Overview

The musical capacity of the negro race has been recognized for so many years that it is hard to explain why no systematic effort has hitherto been made to collect and preserve their melodies. More than thirty years ago those plantation songs made their appearance which were so extraordinarily popular for a while; and if "Coal-black Rose," "Zip Coon" and "Ole Virginny nebber tire" have been succeeded by spurious imitations, manufactured to suit the somewhat sentimental taste of our community, the fact that these were called "negro melodies" was itself a tribute to the musical genius of the race

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781515261575
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	07/29/2015
Pages:	194
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.02(h) x 0.41(d)

About the Author

William Francis Allen, the chief editor and author of the introduction to Slave Songs of the United States, was born in Massachusetts in 1830, studied at Harvard and in Europe, worked for the Freedmen's Aid Commission on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, during the Civil War, and after the war became chair of ancient languages at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Like his cousin William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware took part in wartime educational initiatives in the Sea Islands of South Carolina; more of the transcriptions in the volume are Ware's than any other editor's.

Lucy McKim Garrison grew up among reformers in mid-nineteenth century Philadelphia, worked on the New York Nation with her husband Wendell Garrison, son of William Lloyd Garrison, and initiated the project of collecting and annotating slave songs in the Sea Islands during the Civil War.