HUM 223: 'Sounds of Slavery'

We can't go back in time, and we don't have sound recordings before the early 20th century. But we can get a feel for what early African American music would have sounded like from a book called "The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History through Songs, Sermons, and Speech" written in 2005 by two Australians, Shane White and Graham White.

If you want to read the first chapter, follow the link to the PDF file on Beacon Press' website. It explains the role of music in the daily life of African American slaves. Gena Caponi Tabery, former professor of American studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio and a church pianist in Austin, Texas, says in a review in Christian Century magazine, compares it to the role of music in today's society. She says:

Thanks to our individual, portable, downloadable personal stereo units, we are the most aurally privatized society that has ever lived. More than ever we work, walk and drive to the beat of different drummers. We create our own soundtracks.

So did the communities of slaves trying to make a life for themselves in foreign lands. And because their cultures and those of their captors were so radically different, the collision of those soundtracks created cultural dissonances that American music is still trying to resolve. The Sounds of Slavery tries to reconstruct the aural universe of these slaves - the sounds they made and the sounds they heard. It calls us to roll down the windows of history, to take off our headphones so that we tan listen to the sounds of their past and ours.

Since we listen to music when we're by ourselves so often, and we tend to regard music as entertainment, it's difficult for us to imagine a culture in which "... there was a continuity of the sacred and secular, of work, worship, leisure and play, so that no part of daily life was too lofty or too trivial to be excluded from the commonest work chant or song of praise." Difficult, but not impossible.

White and White wrote their book around a collection of "recorded hollers, stories, prayers, sermons, work songs and, yes, spirituals" dating from the early days of sound recordings. They were sung by the children and grandchildren of slaves, but they give us the only window we'll ever have into the actual sounds of slavery.

Here's a list of tracks on the album, available on line at Beacon Press. We'll listen to a few of them in class.

1 "Arwhoolie." Holler by Thomas J. Marshall. A "holler" was the music of solitary man crying out in the field.
2 Levee holler. By Enoch Brown. An individual singing in a group of men working on a levee.
3 Field holler. By Roosevelt "Giant" Hudson.
4 "Oh If Your House Catches Fire." A levee camp holler, by Willie Henry Washington. As hollers become more elaborate, they're more like songs. But they're still mostly to pass the time and set a rhythm for the work.
5 "Roxie." Convicts, Parchman prison farm, Mississippi. A widely known song in slavery days, and one of the forerunners of the blues.
6 "New Buryin' Ground." John Brown and African American convicts, singing in harmony.
7 "Long Hot Summer Day." Clyde Hill and African American convicts
8 "Go Preach My Gospel" Deacon Harvey Williams and the New Zion Baptist Church congregation
9 "Jesus, My God, I Know His Name." Willie Henry Washington, Arthur Bell, Robert Lee Robertson, and Abraham Powell
10 "Go to Sleep." Florida Hampton. A lullaby.
11 "The Buzzard and the Cooter" Demus Green. A Gullah folk tale from the low country of South Carolina and coastal Georgia.
12 "Prayer." Rev. Henry Ward
13 "Run, Old Jeremiah." Joe Washington Brown and Austin Coleman. The only recorded "ring shout," an ancient type of religious exercise that predates Christianity.
14 "Job, Job." Mandy Tartt, Sims Tartt and Betty Atmore.
15 "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child." Clifford Reed, Johnny Mae Medlock and Julia Griffin. Approaches a high level of art.
16 "Have Mercy, Lord." Mary Tollman and the Rev. Henry Ward. The 23rd Psalm sung by a rural congregation.
17 "The Unusual Task of the Gospel Preacher." Rev. Harry Singleton preaches as a young minister named Green is ordained. Listen to his voice as he goes from speech to chant to singing and back again.
18 "The Man of Calvary." Sin-Killer Griffin. Another preacher who bursts into song. Two minutes in, he raises the old Doctor Watts hymn "I'm not ashamed to own my Lord."