Harry Belafonte once said if it weren't for the African-American contribution to U.S. music, a quintessentially American song like "When the Saints Go Marching In" might have sounded like an old English madrigal -- one of those songs with a lot of "tra la la's" that sound like old-fashioned Christmas carols. It was a joke, but I think there's something to it. And it's central to what we'll be studying in Humanities 223.
To get into the spirit of Belafonte's joke, let's first watch some buskers (street musicians) in New Orleans playing "The Saints" on April 28, 2007, in the old French quarter of New Orleans. (Notice the people who stop and put money in the trumpet player's basket. That's how buskers make money.) We'll also see Louis Armstrong playing it during a 1959 festival in Stuttgart, Germany. The song, like so much of American music, got its start from New Orleans street musicians a lot like the ones we see playing here. And Armstrong was one of the most famous jazzmen of the 20th century worldwide. Even from an old TV screen grab, we can see why.
Then, to get a sense of what Belefonte joked that "The Saints" would have sounded like, we'll hear an authentic English madrigal as performed in the fall of 2007 by the Herndon High School Madrigals in Herndon, Va. The song is "Now is the Month of Maying" by Thomas Morley (ca. 1558-1602). How does it differ from the versions of "The Saints" we heard? How is it the same?
Finally, we'll listen to Belafonte's version of "The Saints" in class, on a scratchy old LP of mine. It's a perfectly respectable version, backed up (unnecessarily, in my opinion) by a 47-piece Carnegie Hall orchestra in 1959, but the main thing I want you to listen for is Bellefonte's intro to the song. It's joke, sure, but ... think about it. What would American music have sounded like without the contribution made to it by black artists?
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