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Urban and Visual Culture in
Contemporary Iran
ii
Urban and Visual Culture in
Contemporary Iran

Non-visibility and the Politics

of Everyday Presence

Pedram Dibazar
 BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2020

Copyright © Pedram Dibazar, 2020

Pedram Dibazar has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as Author of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. ix constitute

an extension of this copyright page.

Cover design by Ben Anslow

Cover image © Rutger Klevenfeldt / Alamy Stock Photo

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for,
any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given
in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher
regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased
to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: HB: 978-1-7883-1197-7

ePDF: 978-1-3501-9531-8
eBook: 978-1-3501-9532-5

Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com
and sign up for our newsletters.
 Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction 1

1 STREETS 17
Capturing the non-visibility of everyday presence 17
Urban emptiness 19
Absent presence 24
An orientation towards the everyday 31

2 CARS 39
Inhabiting the everyday, enacting an embodied cinema of mobility 39
On the move: Abbas Kiarostami’s wandering cars and extended
presence 48
Dwelling in mobility 53
Mobilizing the look 60
An embodied cinema of everyday interaction 69
Conclusion 74

3 ROOFTOPS 81
The invisibility and ambiguity of leftover space 81
Rooftops and the everyday city 82
Rooftops of Iran: Memoirs and popular culture 85
On leftover space 91
Urban rooftops in Iran: The ambivalence of leftover space 95
Rooftop protests: The everyday practice of shouting from rooftops 98
Conclusion 110

4 SHOPPING CENTRES 115

The ambivalence of the scopic regime of the stroll 115
Ambiguities of the shopping centre 117
vi Contents

The scopic regimes of shopping 122

Going for a walk in the shopping centre 131
Conclusion 135

5 SPORTS 141
The unrelenting visibility of wayward bodies 141
Sports and everyday life in Iran: A short history 146
Geographies and visualities of sport 150
The hypervisibility of television sports 158
The spectral community of television sports spectators 167
Conclusion 174

Conclusion 181

Bibliography 188
Index 199
 Illustrations

Plates

Plate 1 Shahab Fotouhi, Internal Affairs (2007)

Plate 2 Ehsan Barati, The Other City (2012–13)
Plate 3 Hamid Shams, Onearthed (2015)
Plate 4 Mohammad Ghazali, Where the Heads of the Renowned Rest
(2009–11)
Plate 5 Mehran Mohajer, Tehran Undated (2009)
Plate 6 Mehraneh Atashi, Tehran’s Self-Portrait (2008–10) 
Plate 7 Mohsen Yazdipour, This Is Me (2003) 
Plate 8 Pietro Masturzo, Tehran Echoes (2009)
Plate 9 Saghar Daeiri, Tehran Shopping Malls (2009)
Plate 10 Mehraneh Atashi, Zourkhaneh/Bodyless (2004) 

Figures

1.1 Shahab Fotouhi, Internal Affairs (2007) 20

1.2 Ehsan Barati, The Other City (2012–13) 20
1.3 Hamid Shams, Onearthed (2015) 20
1.4 Mohammad Ghazali, Where the Heads of the Renowned Rest
(2009–11) 20
1.5 Mehran Mohajer, Tehran Undated (2009) 21
1.6 Mehraneh Atashi, Tehran’s Self-Portrait (2008–10)  29
1.7 Mohsen Yazdipour, This Is Me (2003) 31
2.1 Ten (2002) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 54
2.2 Ten (2002) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 55
2.3 Taste of Cherry (1997) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 57
2.4 Ten (2002) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 58
2.5 Life and Nothing More (1992) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 60
2.6 Life and Nothing More (1992) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 61
viii Illustrations

2.7 Life and Nothing More (1992) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 61

2.8 Life and Nothing More (1992) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 62
2.9 Life and Nothing More (1992) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 62
2.10 Ten (2002) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 64
2.11 Through the Olive Trees (1994) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 66
2.12 Through the Olive Trees (1994) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 67
2.13 Through the Olive Trees (1994) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 68
2.14 Ten (2002) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 71
2.15 Ten (2002) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 72
3.1 Common urban residential rooftops in Iran. Photograph by
Kamyar Adl (Kamshots@Flickr) 97
3.2 Pietro Masturzo, Tehran Echoes (2009) 102
3.3 Pietro Masturzo, Tehran Echoes (2009) 103
3.4 Collection of YouTube videos of rooftop protests 105
4.1 Saghar Daeiri, Tehran Shopping Malls (2009) 125
4.2 Boutique (2003) dir. Hamid Nematollah 127
4.3 Boutique (2003) dir. Hamid Nematollah 128
4.4 Boutique (2003) dir. Hamid Nematollah 130
5.1 Mehraneh Atashi, Zourkhaneh/Bodyless (2004) 151
5.2 Distanciated spectatorship in Offside (2006) dir. Jafar Panahi 157
 Acknowledgements

The foundation for this book is the PhD thesis I developed at Amsterdam
School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), the University of Amsterdam. My PhD
dissertation, and therefore this book, would not have been completed without
the financial and institutional support I received from ASCA, to which I am
very grateful. There I had the chance to participate in numerous seminars,
conferences and academic events, and to gain knowledge and inspiration from
wonderful colleagues and scholars. I feel utterly privileged and grateful to have
been part of ASCA as a PhD candidate, I want to thank all past and present
ASCA members for creating such a wonderful and intellectually inspiring space.
At the later stages of my work on the production of this book, I also received
institutional support from Amsterdam University College under their Research
Allocation Time scheme, and I want to thank AUC for it.
The development of that PhD project and my academic and intellectual progress
leading to, but not limited to, the publication of this book would certainly not have
been achieved without the expert guidance and unwavering support I received
from my supervisor, Christoph Lindner. I wish to express my deepest gratitude
to Christoph for all the detailed feedback, professional advice and positive
encouragement that he offered me since I first met him in 2010. I am grateful
to Christoph also for providing me with opportunities to broaden the scope of
my academic work and gain experience in teaching, publishing and organizing
academic conferences, for helping me start and build an academic career of which
this book is a direct result. My PhD research also benefitted from institutional
support and scholarly feedback I received from the academic community from
early stages of my work up to its final examination, for which I want to thank,
among others, Robin Celikates, Eloe Kingma, Jeroen de Kloet, Negar Mottahedeh,
Esther Peeren, Patricia Pisters, Markus Stauff and Ginette Verstraete.
If my research on this project was productive and fun, it was definitely
thanks to a vibrant and brilliant community of researchers I had the chance
to interact with. I want to particularly thank Miriam Meissner and Judith
Naeff for all the positive energy they carried into our collaborative work in
the ASCA Cities Project, the research project we were members of, for sharing
their enthusiasm and intellect with me, and for the support and friendship they
x Acknowledgements

offered me throughout the years. I am also grateful for many other members of
the academic community for their friendship, help and collegial support; for
proofreading, editing and giving detailed feedback on my work in its various
stages; for sharing with me their work space and intellectual work; for attending
my talks and enlivening the occasion with their presence and questions; and
for all the chats, conversations, coffee breaks, drinks and gossip that truly gave
character to my life as a researcher. I want to thank, among others, Uzma Abid
Ansari, Paula Albuquerque, Selcuk Balamir, Marie Beauchamps, Alex Brown,
Adam Chambers, Alejandra Espinosa, Simon Ferdinand, Pepita Hesselberth,
Walid Houri, Penn IP, Blandine Joret, Simone Kalkman, Tijmen Klous, Aylin
Kuryel, Becky Lindner, Flora Lysen, Geli Mademli, Niall Martin, Lara Mazurski,
Marjan Nijborg, Anna Nikolaeva, Christian Olesen, Asli Ozgen-Tuncer, Nur
Ozgenalp, Eva Sancho Rodriguez, Philipp Schmerheim, Irina Souch, Margaret
Tali, Birkan Tas, Ginaluca Turricchia, Irene Villaescusa Illán, Vesna Vravnik,
Thijs Witty and Tim Yaczo.
My work and life during the time it took to develop this project in Amsterdam
benefited tremendously from the support and assistance, kindness and
encouragements I received from friends and family whose advice and company
I have held dear. I want to particularly thank Babak Afrassiabi, Peyman Amiri,
Romit Chowdhury, Vida and Bita Gharabaghi, Parviz Gharabaghi, George
Mortimer, Edoardo Saba, Ali Shobeiri, Nasrin Tabatabai, and, above all, my
brother Hesam and my mother.
‘On the Move: Abbas Kiarostami’s Wandering Cars and Extended Presence’
in Chapter 2 first appeared as Pedram Dibazar, ‘Wandering Cars and Extended
Presence: Abbas Kiarostami’s Embodied Cinema of Everyday Mobility’ in New
Review of Film & Television Studies, Volume 15, Issue 3, pp. 299–326, 2017, doi:
10.1080/17400309.2017.1308156. It is reprinted by permission of the publisher,
Taylor & Francis Ltd: http://www.tandfonline.com. ‘Urban Rooftops in Iran:
The Ambivalence of Leftover Space’ from Chapter 3 was originally published
as Pedram Dibazar, ‘Leftover Space, Invisibility and Everyday Life: Rooftops in
Iran’ in Global Garbage: Urban Imaginaries of Waste, Excess, and Abandonment,
edited by Christoph Lindner and Miriam Meissner, pp. 101–16, 2015, Oxford:
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Ltd: https://www.routledge.com/. It is reprinted
here with permission.
 Introduction

This book provides a cultural analysis of everyday life in Iran as a rich domain of
social existence and cultural production. Regular patterns of everyday practice in
Iran are imbued with multiple forms of expressivity that have remarkable critical
value for a cultural study of contemporary society. Blended into the rhythms
of everyday life, ordinary modes of being and doing usually do not stand out
as exceptionally noteworthy but remain unmarked and unobtrusive. They join
the flow of daily life and go along with it, functioning within the overall power
system that shapes and sustains certain social structures and ways of life. But
everyday practices also create nonconformities to be lived in public in subtle
ways and suggest non-confrontational modes of resistance to the established
societal norms and structures. The Iranian everyday urban condition is worthy
of analysis, I argue, particularly because it embodies modes of everyday presence
that entail elements of nonconformity to the overarching societal and political
regimes of signification and conduct. This book is about such creative forces of
everyday life in Iran as they are lived in space, visualized in cultural forms and
communicated through media.
In analysing familiar everyday experiences, I consider some of the recurrent
elements that shape a significant, and commonly shared, part of everyday lived
experience in Iranian cities, patterns that are shaped over time, influenced by
social and political developments in the country. More specifically, I focus
on particular ordinary practices – walking, driving, shopping and doing or
watching sports – and spatial conditions – streets, cars, rooftops, leftover
spaces, shopping centres, stadiums and geographies of sport. To do so, I employ
a variety of cultural formations for analysis: films, photography, architecture,
literature, visual arts, television programmes, YouTube videos and other online
platforms. Constituting everyday life as analysed in this book are not only spatial
conditions and the performances and ways of behaviour common to them, but
also media forms (cultural formations of visual and narrative substance) and
2 Urban and Visual Culture in Contemporary Iran

cultural practices that give shape to an understanding of the everyday and create
orientations towards the experiences and imaginaries of everyday living. At the
centre of my investigation of everyday life in Iran are therefore conditions of
space and regimes of visuality.
Everyday life in this sense is not only about what we do ordinarily and how
we manage them, but how imaginaries are created based on those doings and
beings: how everyday life presents itself and how urban cultures shape and
affect certain modes of cultural production in entanglement with certain forms
of mediation. How do we visualize everyday forms of spatial inhabitation and
communicative interaction? How do we make use of them in writing, image-
making and other forms of cultural production and dissemination? Collective
imaginaries make use of certain spatial conditions and patterns of behaviour to
particular effects. The effects they produce are varied, depending on the spatial
condition they deal with and the visual culture they function within. The point
I wish to argue for in this book is that I see a point of convergence in collective
imaginaries of Iranian ordinary citizens and cultural practitioners in that they
all tend to enhance certain forms of non-visibility. What I am referring to is
how a strong aspiration persists in the Iranian urban and visual culture as to
not highlight the strange and extraordinary in the everyday and not to bring
into light that which stands out. This culture is instead crucially concerned with
those unpretentious and embodied modes of spatial inhabitation that are so
enmeshed in the habitual routines of the everyday that they ordinarily escape
notice and remain unmarked and unexceptional – hence, non-visible.
This book gestures towards a description and analysis of modes of everyday
presence in Iran that, although do not stand out as extraordinarily special,
embody elements of nonconformity to the overarching societal and political,
spatial or visual, regimes of signification. In analysing spatial modes of everyday
engagement and cultures of urban living in contemporary Iran in this book,
I do not intend to define certain ways of living as the Iranian type of urban life,
nor do I intend to capture the history of the transformations of ways of life in
Iran or give a detailed ethnographic account of it. My intension is to analyse
the spatial and visual components of modes of everyday presence that embody
elements of nonconformity to the overarching regimes of signification, for which
I build upon previous research on the anthropology and sociology of urban
living in Iran. Among many other important sources of inspiration and insight,
the invaluable works of Shahram Khosravi and Asef Bayat have left tremendous
effects on my work on this book from its inception as an idea to completion, the
traces of which are left throughout the following pages.
 Introduction 3

In his engaging ethnographic account of urban youth culture in Iran, Young

and Defiant in Tehran, Khosravi argues that everyday life in Iran is inevitably
political.1 He suggests that within the trivialities of everyday activities of younger
generations of Iranians lie delicate disobedient practices and forms of conduct,
cultures of defiance that resist the patriarchal hegemony and political authority
in various forms. Khosravi posits everyday performances of the youth in
space and identifies their modes of mobility in, and negotiation with, space as
‘practices of defiance’ – ways of being and doing that challenge the dominant
social orders, albeit in spontaneous and unexaggerated ways. His ethnographic
study explores how certain spaces are used by the youth for their self-expression.
Khosravi’s treatment of space and ordinary ways of being in it has been most
influential for my work. I too in this book identify similar practices of defiance,
ordinary and subtle ways of doing things differently. However, slightly diverging
from Khosravi’s work on a conceptual level, in place of ‘defiant’ I use the term
‘nonconformist’ which conveys less of a sense of confrontation. In this book I
seek to tease out nonconformist ways of being present in the tightly ordered
regime of publicness in Iran.
Asef Bayat’s body of work, especially his seminal Life as Politics: How
Ordinary People Change the Middle East, is celebrated for, among other issues,
its assertion that there is profound social and political significance to be found
in the ways in which the ordinary people in Iran (and Egypt) make sense of their
world through daily interactions.2 Bayat’s thesis concerns the ordinary citizens
at large, who are mostly dispossessed of institutional means for enforcing
significant social change. Bayat’s book is about how ordinary people in their
day-to-day actions strive to make their lives liveable and, with the use of tactics
of informality, transcend various forms of state-imposed rules and orders.
He advocates the notion of ‘art of presence’ as the multiplicity of cunning yet
quotidian methods by which ordinary people strive to assert their physical, social
and cultural presence despite all sorts of constraints. The art of presence entails
creative ways of circumventing constraints by making use of every possibility
available in one’s immediate domain, discovering new spaces and generating
new conditions within which to make oneself ‘heard, seen, felt, and realized’.3
Rather than confronting the system by demanding immediate change, the art of
presence entails covertly deflecting the attention of the disciplinary apparatuses
so as to appropriate the everyday circumstances for slightly different ways of
being and doing.
The art of presence in Bayat’s rendition involves a certain sense of actively
participating in the making of personalized segments of time and space in
4 Urban and Visual Culture in Contemporary Iran

everyday circumstances that are otherwise carefully outlined and policed.

Such nonconformist positions require the citizens’ active conviction, aptitude
and audacity in their creation and upholding. But to function on the level of
the everyday they also presuppose humbleness, modesty and ordinariness of
attitude and modes of presence. Bayat’s concept functions on the level of the
ordinary and the familiar, and concerns the immediate domains in which
people live, work and perform in their daily lives. Rather than receding into
exterior domains of counterculture or oppositional politics, the art of presence
is crucially about ‘refusing to exit from the social and political stage controlled
by authoritarian states, moral authority, and neoliberal economies’.4 The power
of such nonconformist modes of everyday presence lies in the way that, over
time, they ‘may recondition the established political elites and refashion state
institutions into their sensibilities’.5 Among the examples of the art of presence
that Bayat studies are: the urban poor’s politics of informality (squatting and
the use of pavements for commerce), women’s increasing participation in the
traditionally masculine public domains (studying in universities, doing sports,
establishing NGOs and public centres) and the urban youth’s determination in
keeping alternative appearances in public (with deviant hairstyles, clothing and
bodily attributes).
Throughout its development, my project has gained a lot of valuable insight
and inspiration from Bayat’s work. More specifically, Bayat’s work has provided
me with a strong conceptual framework for analysing urban and visual culture
that pays attention to the ordinary and highlights the interrelation between
everyday modes of presence and creative ways of circumventing constraints
and creating new forms of agency in nonconformity. Rather than focusing on
grand narratives – of history or politics – Bayat’s study has put emphasis on, and
shows pathways for, an analysis of the mundane and unexceptional in everyday
life. This focus on the everyday for Bayat is not a random scholarly choice but
responds to the very conditions and structures of life in Iran. For Bayat, the
critical and subversive force of everyday practices are not backlashes but the
very conditions of being and living in a society that is structured rigidly within a
history of top-down governance and control. Under such a system, the material
and corporeal details of everyday conduct carry critical force. Bayat writes: ‘A
mode of government that devotes so much attention to the corporeal disciplining
of its citizens is bound to be susceptible to the undermining influence of their
everyday actions and attitudes’.6
The undermining effects of everyday actions and attitudes carry elements of
creativity and are integral to everyday life; Bayat’s notion of ‘art of presence’ in
Another random document with
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 FOOTNOTES:
[56] It is reproduced in 'The Musician,' Vol. X, p. 484.

[57] This society must not be confounded with one of the same name founded in
1858 at St. Louis by Edward Sobolewsky, the opera composer, for the purpose of
producing the best choruses.

[58] During the Civil War Root was a missionary of patriotism as well as of music,
his 'Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching' and 'The Battle-cry of Freedom'
contributing greatly to the martial spirit of the North. Cf. Chap. XI.

[59] Members of the so-called 'reform' administration of Mayor William J. Gaynor,

which came into power January 1, 1910.
 CHAPTER XI
THE FOLK ELEMENT IN AMERICAN MUSIC

Nationalism in music—Sources of American folk-song;

classification of folk-songs—General characteristics of the negro
folk-song—The negro folk-song and its makers—Other American
folk-songs—The negro minstrel tunes; Stephen Collins Foster, etc.
—Patriotic and national songs.

We have been frequently obliged to indicate, in the course of our

'Narrative History of Music,' that certain known facts about musical
beginnings were not first facts—that there were premises upon
which these facts were based—beyond the ken of the historian. Thus
we discovered that some time in the early centuries of our era a type
of chant known as plain-song was systematized by musicians, but
we were unable to reveal the actual source of that music; later we
came upon a more or less artistic expression in the form of
troubadour songs, and again found their actual source shrouded in
mystery—or tradition—and so forth. We were consequently forced to
the conclusion that, as practice precedes theory, something else
precedes artistic music, which is its source and real beginning. That
something is the elementary expression of the race—or folk-song.
Art music is rooted in folk-song as surely as the tree is rooted in the
soil.

Folk-song is the musical expression of the racial genius. Art music is

the individual expression of the same genius, plus the personal
character of the artist. However distinctive or individual his
expression, no composer has been able to divorce himself from the
racial genius of which he is a part, any more than a poet of a nation
has been able to rise above the national idiom. 'A creative artist,'
says Mr. Henry F. Gilbert,[60] 'is like a noble tree. However tall the
tree may grow, pointing ever heavenward, it still has its roots in the
soil below and draws its sustenance therefrom. So with the great
creative artist: however elevated and universal his utterances
become, the roots of his being are so deeply embedded in the
consciousness of the race of which he is a part, that the influence
and color of this race spirit will be apparent in his greatest works.'

It follows, then, that a composition, if it is to be great, will be

recognizable not only as the work of a man, but also as the product
of a race. This may sound radical in the abstract, but the fact is
easily demonstrated by concrete examples. To quote from the same
source: 'When we survey with our mind's eye the bulk of German
music and contrast it with the bulk of French music or Italian music
we immediately perceive that there is a fundamental difference
between them. Never mind whether we can define it or not, there
the difference is, and I believe that most of us recognize it without
any trouble. At bottom this difference is because of the difference in
race. Inasmuch as the Italian composer in his music unconsciously
expresses the peculiar temper and character of the people among
whom he has been born and of whom he is a spiritual as well as a
physical fragment, so the German composer expresses, likewise
unconsciously, the quite different temper and character of the people
from whom he sprang.... How can any one fail to recognize these
national, or, say, racial characteristics? But there is a school of critics
which maintains that the greatest music strikes the universal note,
and is free from the taint of nationalism. If this were so we might
expect to find the greatest music of Germany, France, Italy, Russia,
Finland, or any other country to be very similar in its appeal and
effect. We should find all this great music to be lacking in special
racial character and to be expressive only of those characteristics
which are common to all the different peoples. If this were true it
would, of course, be possible to conceive of any great piece of music
having been written by any person regardless of his nationality. But
can you do it? Can you, for instance, conceive of Beethoven's
symphonies being the normal expression of an Italian? Or of 'Tristan'
having been written by an Englishman? Can you imagine the
'Pathétique' Symphony of Tschaikowsky having been written by a
Frenchman, or Verdi's 'Otello' composed by a Norwegian? No; the
trail of nationality is over them all.... I believe that the greatest
creative artists have ever been national in the deepest sense of the
word. They have been the mouthpieces of a people, and, while in
their works they unrolled new and hitherto unknown visions of
beauty, their masterpieces have always been an expression and
extension of the race consciousness rather than a contradiction and
denial of it.'

If we accept this dictum, it will be quite rational, in treating the

music of any nation, to begin at the bottom—by defining the sources
and general character of its folk-song. We should have no difficulty
in doing this in the case of France, Germany, or, say, Spain, which
are more or less racially simple, but not so when we take a country
like Austria, for instance, which is the home of at least three
different racial stocks. Each of these has a well-developed music of
its own, which has a well-defined racial complexion quite distinct
from that of the others. Now America is precisely in this position, but
in a very much higher degree. We have not three, but thirty or more
different racial stocks, and of these perhaps six or seven are of
sufficient strength and sufficient permanence to have become
definitely associated with the American soil. Only in a limited sense,
however, are these race settlements 'localized,' as they are in
Austria, and therefore capable of retaining in any degree their
characteristics and traditions. America's position is, in fact, unique in
that it fuses all these apparently antagonistic elements, thus
obliterating in a large measure their own racial peculiarities and, by
the addition of a new, a neutralizing element, substituting a new
product. That product is still in the making, and the neutralizing
element is so intangible as to defy definite description. Indefinitely it
is the spirit born of the sense of liberty of action, opportunity and
optimistic endeavor which colors the character of every settler or
immigrant, irrespective of his extraction.

In contemplating the chaotic state of our 'national' music and in

realizing that its ultimate character is in its formative stage, we are
too apt to forget that it too has its folk-song antecedents, however
heterogeneous they may be. We are not here concerned with the
ultimate product, but with its ingredients. If these are partly English,
Irish, Scotch, German, French, and Spanish, they are nevertheless
legitimate, though these foreign ingredients may be dismissed with a
mere mention in so far as they have suffered no peculiar
transformation upon American soil; those that have suffered
transformation, like those that are indigenous, must receive
attention because they have become legitimate material for our
composers to draw upon in order to identify their art with their
country. In spite of the peculiar position of America with regard to
artistic individuality, then, we may be justified in treating the story of
American creative musical art in the usual manner—beginning with
folk-song.

I
Since we have drawn the distinction between adapted and
indigenous folk-song, the question naturally arises whether there
exists in America a truly indigenous folk-song at all. It has been
agreed that America, having been colonized by Europeans,
possesses no native culture whatever, except such as the Indians
may have had. The Indian, indeed, has the best claim to the name
American, being indigenous, or at least so early a colonizer as to
have constituted virtually a native race. But being the one element
which has not been fused with the many elements of which the
American nation is now composed, he is to-day in the anomalous
position of an indigenous foreigner. For the American of to-day is
predominantly European—of overseas origin—and the European
conquerors have, in this case, not adopted the 'culture' of the
vanquished, because that culture was inferior to their own.

The North American Indian has shown unquestioned evidences of

art instincts—in his folk-lore, his handicrafts, and perhaps also in his
music. But, with respect to the last, his impulses are so
circumscribed by religious formulas and so little affected by a sense
of proportion that they hardly achieve even the mildest form of
artistic expression or design. Moreover, the idiom he employs is so
foreign to us, so exotic in its nature, that either an unconscious or
an impulsive use of it by American composers would be out of the
question. What use has been made of Indian material has been with
the conscious purpose of lending a savage character or local color to
the music, as in the preëminent case of MacDowell's 'Indian Suite.'
This is exactly analogous to the use of Oriental color by such
composers as Saint-Saëns or Delibes. 'Arrangements,' or
harmonizations, attempted upon the basis of our European scale
have led to some pleasing results at the hands of Frederick R.
Burton, Arthur Farwell and others, but at a total sacrifice of the
original character of the tunes. What appeal such arrangements
have to our ears depends entirely upon the harmonic texture or a
readjustment of the melody according to European ideas, not upon
its intrinsic value.

'Folk-songs are echoes of the heart-beats of the vast folk and in

them are preserved feelings, beliefs and habits of vast antiquity. Not
only in the words, which have almost monopolized folk-song study
so far, but also in music and perhaps more truthfully in the music
than in the words. Music cannot lie, for the reason that the things
which are at its base, the things without which it could not be, are
unconscious, involitional human products.'[61] It is evident that
unless we understand or feel 'the things which are at its base' we
cannot respond to the utterances that express them. If for no other
reason, the songs of the Indian, because they express the emotions
of man at a lower and totally foreign stage of culture, cannot enter
into assimilation, with our own. They are therefore not significant to
Americans as folk-songs and we have accordingly treated them
under the heading of Primitive Music in Volume I (pp. 1 ff.).

With the Indian rejected as a source of folk-song where are we to

find such sources? Folk-songs, according to a dictionary definition,
are 'marked by certain peculiarities of rhythm, form, and melody,
which are traceable, more or less clearly, to racial (or national)
temperament, modes of life, climatic and political conditions,
geographical environment and language.' The distinction of one kind
of folk-song from another therefore depends upon a difference in
these peculiarities, and we shall have to look for distinctive
characteristics that belong to no other race if we are to find a truly
indigenous folk-song. On the other hand, the conditions under which
folk-song grows (for it does 'grow' while its sophisticated counterpart
is 'built') are essentially the same. The proverbial dictum that 'sorrow
is the mother of song' is true as a general rule. It is borne out by the
fact that a great majority of the folk-songs of all nations carry a note
of melancholy, and a great preponderance of all such songs is in the
minor mode. But this is particularly so in Northern countries. No
doubt the harsher climatic conditions impose a heavier burden of
care. Mr. Krehbiel, who has examined many folk-songs with regard
to the relative proportion of modes, remarks that nearly all of
Russian song shows the minor predominance peculiar to Northern
countries, and he concludes that political conditions have much the
same effect as climatic ones.

Of course, the songs of happiness are many, too, but even these are
in a measure the product of suffering, for man recognizes well-being
very often only by contrast; continuous bliss he is apt to manifest by
indifference. Hence we are not surprised that the strongest
outbursts of joy, often wild and boisterous, are common to the
nations whose dominant note is grief. But whatever the country, folk-
song springs invariably from the poorest classes, and most often
from the peasant, for, exposed to the phenomena of nature as well
as to economic stress, his imagination is constantly stirred by the
beauties of the earth, the mysteries and the tragedy of life.

In looking for analogous conditions in America we may think first of

the pioneer, the early settler, who no doubt had hardships to endure
and privations to suffer. But by peculiar circumstances he was
unfitted for the creation of song. Springing largely from a notoriously
unimaginative tradesman's class, inspired by the stern principles of a
piety that deliberately suppressed impulsive expression as sinful, and
almost constantly engaged in savage warfare, he may hardly be
looked upon as an originator of poetic beauty. Moreover, his English
culture clung to him for generations, while politically he considered
himself an Englishman. The songs he sang, therefore, were the
songs of his fathers, and precious little social opportunity he had for
indulging in their charm. Isolation and lack of communication
effectually precluded a current interchange of ideas.

In a great measure these conditions apply to the subsequent

generations of all European races in America—the pioneers as well
as the later immigrants. Their own traditions, whatever their
nationality, are preserved for a generation or so to the exclusion of
new influences; then the old songs die away and the memory of
them becomes obliterated in the great stream of cosmopolitanism.
Only in isolated spots, where a race, especially strong in tradition or
racial peculiarities, or where a mere aggregation of people, united in
a common mode of life, is sequestered, have these traditions
survived or engendered new ones. Instances of this are the French
Canadians, the Creoles of Louisiana, the Spanish-Americans of
Mexico and California, and the mountaineers of Kentucky and
Virginia. These people have a folk-song peculiar to themselves,
which is founded, however, upon a traditional racial idiom, and may
therefore be classed as 'adapted' or 'transformed' folk-song. For the
indigenous American folk-song we shall have to look elsewhere.

The only caste in American history whose condition in any way

resembled that of the peasant class in Europe was the negro slave of
the South. Not only was he subjected to sufferings, hardships, and
oppression, but, injected into a civilization in which he found himself
an outcast, he was forced to create a racial existence for himself,
which, while it adapted elements of the society that ruled him,
nevertheless was bound to be distinctive because of a peculiar
admixture of savage customs and superstitions, the imperfection of
his understanding, and the extraordinary emotional makeup of his
character. The negro in his uncivilized way was endowed with the
ingenuousness of a child, and the susceptibility to impressions that
goes with the untutored mind. He had a childlike, poetic nature, a
natural gift of song, an emotionalism and a sentimentality that
responded unfailingly to all the pangs of an unjust and cruel
existence. The ruthless severing of family ties, the physical pains,
the hardships of labor found a direct expression in his music, the
idiom of which was partly innate and partly acquired. Add to this the
intense religious excitement to which the negro is subject—an
emotion which seems to have translated itself with all its elemental
power from savage idolatry to Christian worship—and you have a
combination which could not but produce a striking result. 'Nowhere
save on the plantation of the South could the emotional life which is
essential to the development of true folk-song be developed,
nowhere else was there the necessary meeting of the spiritual cause
and the simple agent and vehicle.'[62]

The peculiar fact that the one true indigenous class of American folk-
song is the product of an African race is, as we have seen, due to
circumstances alone. It is no reflection upon the capabilities of the
other races for artistic expression. It simply demonstrates the fact
that folk-song grows under certain conditions and no other. A nation
that is prosperous, that is plunged headlong into the feverish
activities of industrial progress, cannot be expected to bring forth
melancholy 'complaints' or gems of contemplative lyricism. But there
come even to such nations moments of national stress that give rise
to unusual outbursts. While these are usually voiced by single
individuals, they reproduce so vividly the spirit of the people that
they often rank with folk-songs in spontaneity and directness. Such
are the patriotic songs, whose creation accompanied every war and
every revolution. Often they are mere adaptations of freshly
composed words to old but stirring tunes, which thus take on a new
significance—often these very tunes are 'captured' from the enemy
and annexed to the country's flag. Such was the case in the War of
the Revolution, in the War of 1812, and again in the Civil War. These
songs—not strictly folk-songs—might better be described as 'songs
in the folk manner,' a distinction indicated in German by the
adjective volkstümlich or volksmässig.

Such songs in the folk manner follow in the wake of every

considerable folk-song tradition. They have not failed to do so in
America, and it is significant that the spirit which they reproduce or
aim to reproduce is the spirit of the negro folk-song. The movement,
or after-movement, started with the imitation of negro ditties by
white composers in connection with the so-called negro minstrel
troupes which, beginning about 1845, became a favorite form of
amusement in the United States. Its culmination must be recognized
in the work of such men as Stephen Foster and Henry Clay Work,
whose works are part of the permanent stock of American lyrics.
Beyond this the negro song has had an influence upon the so-called
American popular song, a degenerate type which has appropriated,
often in distorted form, some of the character of plantation song,
notably the peculiar form of syncopation known as 'ragtime.'

We have now enumerated all the subdivisions of folk-song in its

broader sense: the native folk-song proper, exemplified by the negro
plantation song; the song in the folk manner, exemplified by the
negro minstrel tunes, the work of Stephen Foster and the patriotic
songs, adapted or original; the adapted folk-song of the French-
Canadian, Spanish-American, the Kentucky mountaineer, etc.; and,
finally, the simon-pure folk-song of foreign birth, perpetuated in
America by immigrants. All of these are vital forces in American
composition and as such must receive more detailed attention.
 II
The discussion of the negroes' claim to the title 'American' would be
perhaps out of place at this late date, and particularly in this place,
were it not that a considerable class of American citizens has denied
to them not only social equality but equal consideration and
opportunity as a native citizen of the country. The preponderance of
European blood in the nation hardly justifies this any more than it
would justify the exclusion of the large number of Americans that
are of anciently oriental origin. In contrast with this the name
'American' is never denied to the Indian, but priority of settlement
can hardly be argued in his favor, for by such reasoning the negro
has superior claims over some of the 'elect' of the white elements
among Americans. Negroes were sold into slavery in Virginia before
the landing of the Pilgrims in 1790. The first census of the United
States showed 759,208 negroes, and to-day they constitute nearly
13 per cent. of the entire population. Their intellectual powers have
been amply proved by the achievements of individual members of
the race, in science, in education, and in the arts. It is hardly
necessary to name such men as Booker T. Washington, Paul
Lawrence Dunbar, and Dr. Burghardt DuBois in support of this. Mr.
Krehbiel, however, does well in quoting the last-named of these in
proving the present contention:

'Your country? How came it yours? Before the Pilgrims landed we

were here. Here we have brought three gifts and mingled them with
yours—a gift of story and song, soft stirring melody in an ill-
harmonized and unmelodious land; the gift of sweat and brawn to
beat back the wilderness, conquer the soil and lay the foundations of
this vast economic empire two hundred years earlier than your weak
hands could have done it; the third a gift of the Spirit. Around us the
history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the
nation's heart we have called all that was best, to throttle and
subdue what was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice have
billowed over this people, and they have found peace only in the
altars of the God of Right....'

The negroes' songs are sung in the language of the country—or a

dialect of it; and, while they do not voice the sentiments of the
entire population—no song in a country so heterogeneous could do
that—they are American songs by the same right that the peasant
songs of Russia are Russian or the song of any other class of
Americans would be American.

In order to prove the originality of the negro folk-song it has been

necessary to combat the opinion of so learned a writer as Dr.
Wallaschek,[63] who has contended that these songs are
'unmistakably "arranged"—not to say ignorantly borrowed—from the
national songs of all nations, from military signals, well-known
marches, German students' songs, etc., unless it is pure accident
which has caused me to light upon traces of so many of them.' This
radical statement, while it has the force of scientific deduction, is
erroneous in the premises upon which these deductions are based.
Dr. Wallaschek has relied too freely upon the testimony of travellers
whose musical knowledge is doubtful and he has evidently confused
genuine slave songs with imitations of them, such as the so-called
minstrel tunes written by whites. Besides, as Mr. Krehbiel very
plausibly remarks, 'similarities exist between the folk-songs of all
peoples. Their overlapping is a necessary consequence of the
proximity and intermingling of peoples, like modifications of
language; and there are some characteristics which all songs except
those of the rudest and most primitive kind must have in common.
The prevalence of the diatonic scales and march-rhythms, for
instance, make parallels invariable. If the use of such scales and
rhythms in the folk-songs of the American negroes is an evidence of
plagiarism or imitation, it is to be feared that the peoples whose
music they put under tribute have been equally culpable with them.
Mr. William Francis Allen—with Charles Pickard Ware and Lucy McKim
Garrison the compiler of the most famous collection of negro
songs[64]—while admitting that negro music is partly imitative of the
music of the whites, says that 'in the main it appears to be original
in the best sense of the word, and the more we examine the
subject, the more genuine it appears to be.' Only in a very few
songs does Mr. Allen trace strains of less familiar music which the
slaves heard their masters sing or play. In spite of this, the songs
themselves prove that they are the spontaneous utterances of an
entire people. As in the case of all folk-songs, their first germs were
uttered by individual spokesmen, but these germs were such
genuine reflections of sentiments common to all and were subjected
to such modifications in their travels from lip to lip as to assume the
character of a composite expression of the race. They are indeed
'original and native products. They contain idioms transplanted
hither from Africa, but as songs they are the product of American
institutions, of the social, political, and geographical environment
within which their creators were placed in America; of the joys,
sorrows, and experiences which fell to their lot in America.'

Having established the 'Americanism' and the originality of the negro

folk-song, and having stated the presence of an African as well as
European element, we may now attempt to point definitely to
instances of both. Generally speaking, the African characteristics
consist of rhythmic and melodic aberration, while the European
ingredients find expression in the harmonic structure and the style of
the melodies as far as they are influenced by that structure. But this
statement is subject to qualifications. While the African, like every
other exotic race, is generally innocent of harmonic science,
travellers have brought evidences of a genuine natural feeling for
harmony among the African tribes. Thus a German officer recounted
to John W. D. Moodie[65] how his playing of an aria from Gluck's
Orfeo on the violin was immediately imitated with accompaniments
by the native Hottentots. Peter Kolbe, writing in 1719, testified to
the Hottentots' playing of their gom-goms in harmony, and Mr.
Krehbiel records the singing of a Dahoman minstrel at the World's
Columbian Exposition (1893) to the accompaniment of a Chinese
harp as follows: 'With his right hand he played over and over again a
descending passage of dotted crotchets and quavers in thirds; with
his left hand he syncopated ingeniously on the highest tuned string.'
According to the same writer, another investigator, Dr. Wangemann,
transcribed a hymn by a Kaffir in which the solos were sung in
unison but the refrain in full harmony. These instances should give
some clue to the extraordinary ability of negroes to 'harmonize,' that
is, improvise harmonies to a given melody.

Of course, the strongest musical accomplishment of the African is his

extraordinary command of rhythm. As is the case with most primitive
music, the rhythm of the African music is determined by the native
dances. The drum, which marks the rhythm, is the most important
instrument of the African, and his ability upon it is nothing short of
marvellous. He has developed a 'drum language' which he uses in
signalling in war time and for communication at long distance. 'The
most refined effects of the modern tympanist seem to be put in the
shade by the devices used by African drummers in varying the sound
of their instruments so as to make them convey meanings, not by
conventional formulas but by actual imitation of words.'[66] Their
ability to use cross rhythms and intricate effects of syncopation is
evidently inherited by the American negroes, whose prowess in that
direction may be verified in a thousand dance halls. Syncopation and
the peculiar form of it which Mr. Krehbiel refers to as the 'Scotch
snap' is indeed the outstanding characteristic of all negro music. The
short note on a strong beat immediately followed by a longer one on
a weak beat, and the consequent shifted rhythm popularly known as
'ragtime' is scarcely ever absent in negro folk-music. That it is a
heritage from Africa seems to be conclusively proved by the
recording of such melodies as these:
 Drum Call from West Africa.

Hottentot Melody.

Next to their rhythmic snap, the most radically outlandish

characteristic of the negro songs is their frequent variation from the
diatonic scale. This most often takes the form of a raised (major)
sixth in a minor key (while the seventh is not varied or is omitted
altogether); the raised seventh in the minor scale, or the flattened
seventh in the major. Besides these 'wild notes,' as Mr. Krehbiel calls
them, there are omissions of certain notes of the scale that produce
a decided exotic effect. Thus we have the major scale without the
seventh or without the fourth, and the minor scale without the sixth.
The major scale with both the fourth and the seventh omitted, in
other words the pentatonic scale, familiar in all primitive and exotic
music as well as in certain folk-tunes, notably the Celtic, is also
present in negro song. There are, moreover, examples in the so-
called whole-tone scale.

The effect produced by these aberrations constitutes the most

beautiful quality of negro music. We cannot refrain from quoting
here an example or two. The raised sixth in the minor scale is most
exquisitely shown in the famous 'spiritual' 'You May Bury Me in de
Eas',' which we quote in full, without harmonization:[67]
 You may bur-y me in the East, You may bur-y me in the West;
But I'll
hear the trump-et sound In that morn-ing. In that morn-ing,
my Lord,
How I long to go, For to hear the trump-et sound, In that
morn-ing.

Another instance is seen in the second section of 'Come Tremble-ing

Down,' the first part of which is in C major, turning into A minor with
a striking disregard of harmonic convention, and proceeding as
follows:

Come trem-ble-ing down, go shout-ing home, Safe in the

sweet arms of
Je-sus, Come Je-sus, 'Twas just a-bout the break of day, King
Je-sus stole my
 heart a-way, 'Twas just a-bout the break of day, King Je-sus
stole my heart a-way.

Such examples contain nothing that is imitative. Their disregard for

the natural progressions of diatonic melody leave no doubt that the
negro possessed, to begin with, a wholly independent sense of
tonality, which sense he has in some measure retained or
compromised. As an instance of the minor seventh in the major
scale take 'A Great Camp Meetin'.' We quote only the last three
measures of the first section in order to establish the key:

Don't you get a-weary, Dere's a great camp-meet-in' in de

prom-ised land,
Gwine to mourn an' neb-ber tire,——— mourn an' neb-ber
tire,
mourn an' neb-ber tire;— Dere's a great camp-meet-in' in de
prom-ised land.

And, as a last example of tunes that have little in common with any
other kind of folk-song, a melody worthy of the sophistication of an
ultra-modern composer, let us add 'O'er the Crossing':
 Bend-in' knees a-ach-in', Bod-y rack'd wid pain, I wish I was a
child of God, I'd
git home bime-by. Keep-prain', I do be-lieve We're a long time
wag-gin' o' de
cross-in'. Keep pray-in', I do be-lieve We'll git home to heav-
en bime-by.

There are many, many more.[68] Melodic imagination of a high order

would be required to produce consciously such melodies as these.
There is in them little that is trivial, nothing that is frivolous. Even
the 'rhythmic snap' never sounds cheap in true negro music, as
distinct from worthless imitations and so-called popular music—'coon
songs' and the like. Note the following as a noble example of its use:
 No-bod-y know's the trou-ble I see, Lord, No-bod-y know's
the trou-ble I see;
No-bod-y know's the trou-ble I see, Lord, No-bod-y knows but
Je-sus.
Broth-ers, will you pray for me, will you pray for me,
Brothe-rs, will you pray for me, And help me to drive old Sa-
tan a-way?

In summing up the melodic and rhythmic characteristics of negro

tunes we may state the apparently contradictory fact that the great
majority of them are in the major mode, notwithstanding their
almost ever-present note of sadness. Out of 527 songs analyzed by
Mr. Krehbiel 416 are in ordinary major, only 62 in ordinary minor, 23
'mixed and vague,' and 111 pentatonic. Herein the negro folk-song
differs from most other folk-songs. Its Southern habitat would, of
course, seem to predispose it to major, and thus it bears out the
argument in favor of climatic influence. Nevertheless the effect of
sadness in the melodies does not escape us. Often it is produced by
the aberrations of which we have spoken; but more often it is less
tangible. In the words of Dr. DuBois 'these songs are the music of an
unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; and they tell of
death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of
misty wanderings and hidden ways.'

Practically all of the songs are in duple and quadruple rhythm, triple
time is extremely rare. The rhythmic propulsion is always strong.
The persistent excitement of rhythm is evidently an African relic and
the sense of it is so strong as to overcome the natural tendencies of
the text. 'The negroes keep exquisite time,' says Mr. Allen, 'and do
not suffer themselves to be daunted by any obstacle in the words.
The most obstinate hymns they will force to do duty with any tune
they please and will dash heroically through a trochaic tune at the
head of a column of iambs with wonderful skill.'
The form of the songs is, of course, determined by the structure of
the verse. They are composed of simple two-and four-bar phrases.
Four such usually make up a stanza, while four more are comprised
in the 'chorus' often placed at the beginning of the song and
repeated after every verse. The stanzas of the older songs
commonly contain an alternating solo and refrain; the second and
fourth lines are usually given to the refrain and the first and third to
the verse, the third being often a repetition of the first. In some
cases the refrain occupies three lines and the verse the remaining
one. 'The refrain is repeated with each stanza,' says Mr. Allen
concerning the manner of performance, '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.'[69]

Some difficulty was experienced by those who have transcribed the

music of the negroes in reproducing 'the entire character' of the
songs by the conventional symbols of the art. This is due in part to
the primitive elements in the music, and in part to the peculiar
manner of the performance. The characteristic improvisational style
of the negro, the peculiar quality of the voices, and the slurring of
certain values are all necessary in order to produce the proper
effect. Moreover, the improvised harmony, simple as it was, had
become an inherent part of the music not easily to be reproduced.
The following description, taken from 'Slave Songs in the United
States,' may be illuminating in this connection:

'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 the 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 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
variety, and yet rarely with any discord. 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.'

A word should be added here regarding the instruments used by the

negro. The one most closely identified with him is, of course, the
banjo, which, in a primitive form, he is said to have brought from
Africa. The 'banjar' to which Thomas Jefferson refers in his 'Notes on
Virginia' was an instrument of four strings, or perhaps less at first,
whose head was covered with a rattlesnake's skin, and which
resembled closely an instrument used by the Chinese. (Cf. Vol. I, p.
54.) It is thought that the original banjo was a melodic rather than a
harmonic instrument, which is the peculiar office of its modern off-
spring, and, since the negro's music was at first purely melodic, it
must have been accordingly played. The tuning, too, was probably
very different from that of the banjo of to-day.

Besides this, the negro's chief instrument was the drum, as already
indicated. There were two principal sizes, made of a hollowed log
(the smaller one often of bamboo sections) over the end of which
sheep or goat skin was stretched. These drums were played in a
horizontal position, the player sitting on the instrument astride. Then
there were rattles, some like the Indians', some consisting of a jaw-
bone of an animal, across which a piece of metal was 'rasped'; also
the morimbabrett, consisting of a small shallow box of thin wood,
with several sections of reed, of graduated lengths, placed across it,
the ends of which were plucked by the player. The familiar Pan's
pipes, made from two joints of brake cane ('quills') and various noise
instruments—'bones,' triangle, tambourine, and whistles—were all
made to do duty. But when the negro had become thoroughly
civilized the violin became his favorite instrument, and the
'technique' he achieved upon it without any real training has often
astonished the white listener.

III
Attention was not directed to the value of negro songs till the middle
of the nineteenth century. Considerable research resulted finally in
the publication of several collections, of which the 'Slave Songs of
the United States,' already mentioned above, was the first. This
collection of songs represents every phase in the gamut of
expression. The so-called 'sorrow' songs, the oldest surviving negro
songs, are perhaps the most expressive. Some of them have sprung
from the memories of a single act of cruelty, or an event of such
tragedy as to create a really deep impression. Others echo simply
the hardships encountered day by day. There are songs, too, that
reflect the sunshine and gaiety that was not altogether foreign to
plantation life, but those inspired by grief are the most beautiful.
Then there are the 'occupational' songs suggested by the rhythm of
labor which form a part of every kind of folk-song the world over.
The value of such songs was fully recognized by the slaves' masters,
for they were unfailing accelerators of labor, and it is known that the
slaves who led the singing in the field were given special rewards. In
consequence of this the negroes generally came to abhor that class
of songs, and it is significant that very few of the 'corn songs,' 'reel
tunes,' 'fiddle songs,' and 'devil songs' have been preserved, while
hundreds of the religious songs—'spirituals,' etc.—are now common
property.[70]

A special class of labor songs were the so-called 'railroad songs,'

which originated during the Civil War, when negroes were employed
in building earth works and fortifications. They consisted of a series
of rhythmic, protracted chants, upon words usually originated by a
leader. Railroad tracks were laid to these same strains—hence their
name. Their originality of thought and the fact that they represent
the last spontaneous outburst of the negro under rapidly changing
conditions, lends them a special interest. The railroad itself naturally
stimulated the negro's imagination. He introduced it metaphorically
even in his religious songs: the Christian was a traveller, the Lord
was the conductor and the ministers were the brakemen. At gospel
stations the train stopped for those that were saved, or to supply the
engine with the water of life. All of the negro's power of imagery
was here brought into play.

The love songs of the negro are few and those few lack depth, and
sometimes border on frivolity. An exception is usually made for 'Poor
Rosy,' concerning which one old negress has said that 'it cannot be
sung without a full heart and troubled spirit.'

We have already pointed out the preponderance of religious songs in

the folk-music of the negro. The reason is not hard to find. In his
aboriginal home religious rite, music and dance were closely
associated, as they are in the life of all primitive peoples. The
African's religion was a form of idolatry known as voodooism.
Connected with it were certain chants and rites, relics of which have
long survived.[71] These primitive rites were calculated to excite the
emotions rather than to uplift the spirit and under this excitement
the negro gave voice to the music that was in him. He accepted the
Christian religion as a substitute just as he accepted the English
language as a substitute for his African tongue. He garbled both. He
considered the new religion not in a dogmatic, philosophical, or
ethical sense, but rather as an emotional experience. When under
religious excitement he would wander through the woods in swamps
much like the ancient Bacchantes. 'A race imbued with strong
religious sentiment,' says Mr. M. A. Haskell,[72] 'one rarely finds
among them an adult who has not gone through that emotional
experience known as conversion, after which it is considered vanity
and sinfulness to indulge in song other than of a sacred character.'
His religion became the negro's one relief, comfort, and enjoyment.
His daily life became tinged with his belief; in his very sufferings he
saw the fulfillments of its promises. Nothing but patience for this life,
nothing but triumph in the next—that was the tenor of his lay.
Emancipation he thought of in terms of ultimate salvation rather
than earthly freedom. Thus he sang:

'Children, we shall all be free,

Children, we shall all be free,
Children, we shall all be free,
When the Lord shall appear.'

A religious allegory colored nearly all his songs, a pathetic, childlike

trust in the supernatural spoke through them, and biblical
references, echoes of the 'meetin',' shreds of the minister's teaching,
were strewn indiscriminately through all of them. 'The rolling of
Jordan's waters, the sound of the last trumpet, the vision of Jacob's
ladder, the building of the ark, Daniel in the lion's den, Ezekiel's
wheel in the middle of a wheel, Elijah's chariot of fire, the breaking
up of the Universe, the lurid pictures of the Apocalypse—all asked
for swelling proclamation.' Analogies between the chosen people and
their own in bondage were inevitable—and 'Hallelujahs' seemed as
appropriate in secular songs as in spiritual ones.

Often biblical words were garbled into mere nonsense. Thus 'Jews
crucified him' became 'Jews, screws, defidum,' etc. The personality
of the Prince of Darkness assumed a degree of reality which reminds
us of the characters of mediæval miracle plays. One of the songs
personifies him thus:

'O Satan comes, like a busy ole man,

Hal-ly, O hal-ly, O hal-lelu!
He gets you down at de foot o' de hill,
Hal-ly, O hal-ly, O hal-lelu!'
The so-called spirituals ('sper'chels) hold perhaps the largest place in
the negro's sacred repertory. These plantation songs—'spontaneous
outbursts of intense religious fervor'—had their origin chiefly in the
camp-meetings, the revivals, and other religious exercises. 'They
breathe a childlike faith in a personal Father and glow with the hope
that the children of bondage will ultimately pass out of the
wilderness into the land of freedom.' To them belong such gems as
'You May Bury Me in the Eas',' the plaintive 'Nobody Knows de
Trouble I see,' the tender 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,' and many
others as rare.

At meetings the spirituals were often accompanied by a most

extraordinary form of religious ceremony, namely the so-called
'shouts,' which flourished particularly in South Carolina and south of
it during antebellum days.[73] The spirituals sung in this connection
were consequently called 'shout songs' or 'running spirituals.' The
shouts were veritable religious orgies, or bacchanalia, and no doubt
represent a relic of an African custom. Julien Tiersot refers to them
as 'dishevelled dances.'[74] A vivid description of a shout is given by
a writer in 'The Nation' of May 30, 1867:

'... The "shout" takes place on Sundays, or on "praise" nights

throughout the week, and either in the praise-house or in some
cabin in which a regular religious meeting has been held. Very likely
more than half the population of a plantation is gathered together.
Let it be the evening, and a light fire burns red before the door of
the house and on the hearth. For sometime one hears, though at a
good distance, a vociferous exhortation or prayer of the presiding
elder or of the brother who has a gift that way and is not "on the
back seat"—a phrase the interpretation of which is "under the
censure of the church authorities for bad behavior"—and at regular
intervals one hears the elder "deaconing" a hymn-book hymn, which
is sung two lines at a time and whose wailing cadences, borne on
the night air, are indescribably melancholy.
'But the benches are pushed back to the wall when the formal
meeting is over, and old and young, men and women, sprucely
dressed young men, grotesquely half-clad field hands—the women
generally with gay handkerchiefs twisted about their heads and with
short skirts—boys with tattered shirts and men's trousers, young
girls barefooted, all stand up in the middle of the floor, and when the
"sperichil" is struck up begin first walking and by and by shuffling
around, one after the other, in a ring. The foot is hardly taken from
the floor, and the progression is mainly due to a jerking, twitching
motion which agitates the entire shouter and soon brings out
streams of perspiration. Sometimes they dance silently, sometimes
as they shuffle they sing the chorus of the spiritual, and sometimes
the song itself is sung by the dancers. But more frequently a band,
composed of some of the best singers and of tired shouters, stand at
the side of the room to "base" the others, singing the body of the
song and clapping their hands together on the knees. Song and
dance are alike extremely energetic, and often, when the shout lasts
into the middle of the night, the monotonous thud, thud of the feet
prevents sleep within half a mile of the praise house.'

Closely related to the shout songs are the funeral songs which
accompanied the 'wakes' and burials of the negroes. They were sung
in a low monotonous croon by those who 'sat up' and are
particularly noted for their irregularity in everything except rhythm.
The negroes are especially inclined to voice their sorrow in nocturnal
song, as their savage ancestors did before them, and likewise they
indulged in funeral dances at night. Mrs. Jeanette Robinson Murphy,
writing in 'The Independent,' speaks of a custom in which hymns are
sung at the deathbed to become messengers to loved ones gone
before and which the departing soul is charged to bear to heaven.
'When a woman dies some friend or relative will kneel down and
sing to the soul as it takes flight. One of these songs contains
endless verses, conveying remembrances to relatives in glory.' Often
these funeral songs convey deep emotion in a nobly poetic vein. An
example recorded by Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson has the
following words:
 'I know moonlight, I know starlight,
I lay dis body down.
I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight,
I lay dis body down.
I know de graveyard, I know de graveyard,
When I lay dis body down.
I walk in de graveyard, I walk troo de graveyard,
Fo lay dis body down.
I lay in de grave, and stretch out my arm;
I lay dis body down.
I go to de judgment in de evenin' of de day,
When I lay dis body down,
An' my soul an' your soul will meet in de day
When I lay dis body down.'

'Never, it seems to me,' comments Col. Higginson, 'since man first

lived and suffered, was his infinite longing for peace uttered more
plaintively than in that line.' There are many other examples of such
funeral songs preserved; some of them Mr. Krehbiel has reprinted in
his 'Afro-American Folksongs' (pp. 100 ff.).

Few of the secular songs have survived. Even these, it seems, were
often made to do service in the religious meeting, on the Wesleyan
principle that it would not do to let the devil have all the good tunes.
Some songs, on the other hand, were used to accompany rowing as
well as 'shouting'—probably because of the similarity of the rhythm
in the two motions. In 'Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,' which was a
real boat-song, not a human Michael but the archangel himself was
meant. Other tunes used for rowing were 'Heav'n Bell a-ring',' 'Jine
'em,' 'Rainfall,' 'No Man,' and 'Can't stay behin'.' Similarly, other
spirituals were used as working songs, for their rhythms were hardly
ever sluggish. As a good specimen of purely secular songs—'the
strange barbaric songs that one hears upon the Western
steamboats'—Mr. W. F. Allen points to the following:
 I'm gwine to Al-a-ba-my, Oh!———
For to see my mam-my, Oh!———

She went from ole Virginny,

And I'm her pickaninny,

She lives on the Tombigbee,

I wish I had her wid me.

Now I'm a good big nigger,

I reckon I won't git bigger,

But I'd like to see my mammy,

Who lives in Alabamy.

The negro's natural impulse for dancing seems to have found its
outlet in the 'shout,' as far as the Atlantic seaboard states are
concerned at least, for the Christian sects promptly stamped out the
dances which were connected with primitive superstition. In
Louisiana, however, the negro came in contact with a very different
sort of people, the Spanish and French settlers—southern races of a
more sensuous turn than the Anglo-Saxon. The musical result was
the superposition of Spanish and French melody over negro rhythms
—the two ingredients of the Creole folk-songs, which are to a large
extent dance songs.
The warlike and lascivious dances of the African took on a more
civilized form under the influence of Spanish and French culture,
though they are said in some cases to have remained licentious
enough. But the product has been highly influential musically. Thus
the fascinating Habañera, the familiar rhythm of many a Spanish
melody, is, according to Albert Friedenthal,[75] of negro origin. As its
name indicates, Havana was its home and from there it spread to all
Spanish and Portuguese America, the West Indies, Central and South
America. 'Extended and complicated rhythms are known only where
the negroes are to be found,' says our investigator. Mr. Krehbiel
quotes a creole song from Martinique, built upon the Habañera
rhythm, entitled Tant sirop est doux, and speaks of Afro-American
songs in which the characteristic rhythm is so persistently used as to
suggest that they were influenced by a subconscious memory of the
old dance. Other dances of negro origin, mentioned by writers on
the Antilles, are the Bamboula, Bouèné, Counjai, Kalinda, Bélé,
Bengume, Babouille, Cata, and Guiouba. The term 'juba' applied to
the plucking accompaniments of negro dance-songs in minstrel
shows may be a derivative of the last.

In speaking of the Creole we must emphasize that the word is not

properly applied to any persons of mixed stock, as has been
frequently done. Creole is a word of Spanish etymology and was
used to denote the pure-blooded Spanish or French native of the
American colonies. But it is the negro slaves of these creoles—whom
we may call black creoles (including mulattoes, quadroons, etc.)—
that created the charming songs breathing the spirit of the tepid
zone along the great gulf and the Father of Waters. They, too, are
the creators of the patois to which the songs are set. Concerning the
origin of this patois Mr. Krehbiel gives some interesting details: 'The
creole patois, though never reduced to writing by its users, is still a
living language. It is the medium of communication between black
nurses and their charges in the French families of Louisiana to-day,
and half a century ago it was exclusively spoken by French creoles
up to the age of ten or twelve years. In fact, children had to be
weaned from it with bribes or punishment. It was, besides, the
language which the slave spoke to his master and the master to
him. The need which created it was the same as that which created
the corrupt English of the slaves in other parts of the country....
Thus, then, grew the pretty language, soft in the mouth of the
creole as bella lingua in bocca toscana, in which the creole sang of
his love, gave rhythmical impulse to the dance, or scourged with
satire those who fell under his displeasure.'

The Creole songs, according to Lafcadio Hearn, are 'Frenchy in

construction but possess a few African characteristics of method.'
'There could neither have been creole patois nor creole melodies but
for the French and Spanish blooded slaves of Louisiana and the
Antilles. The melancholy, quavering beauty and weirdness of the
negro chant are lightened by the French influence, subdued and
deepened by the Spanish.' Unlike the negro slave of the Virginias
and Carolinas, etc., who poured out all his emotion in gospel hymn
and spirituals, the black creole was especially fond of love-songs—
crooning love songs in the soft, pretty words of his patois—some
sad, some light-hearted. One is 'the tender lament of one who was
the evil of his heart's choice the victim of chagrin in beholding a
female rival wearing those vestments of extra quality that could only
be the favors which both women had courted from the hand of some
proud master whence alone such favors could come.'[76] Another,
'Caroline,' reveals the romance and the tragedy of the dramatic life
of the young creole slaves. We quote it here, as our one example of
creole tunes: