 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois. Music and Text, recorded by Toria's Uncle, Chapter 14 Of the sorrow songs, I walk through the churchyard to lay this body down. By no moonrise, by no starrise, I walk in the moonlight, I walk in the starlight, I lie in the grave and stretch out my arms, I'll go to judgment in the evening of the day, and my soul and thy soul shall meet that day when I lay this body down. Negrosong, they that walked in darkness sang songs in the olden days, sorrow songs, for they were weary at heart. And so before each thought that I have written in this book, I have set a phrase, a haunting echo of these weird old songs in which the soul of the black slave spoke to men. Ever since I was a child these songs have stirred me strangely. They came out of the south unknown to me one by one, and yet at once I knew them as of me and of mine. Then and after years when I came to Nashville, I saw the great temple build out of these songs towering over the pale city. To me Jubilee Hall seemed ever made of the songs themselves, and its bricks were red with the blood and dust of toil. Out of them rose for me morning, noon, and night bursts of wonderful melody full of the voices of my brothers and sisters, full of the voices of the past. Little of beauty has America given the world, save the rude grandeur of God himself stamped on her bosom. The human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And so by fateful chance the negro folk song, the rhythmic cry of the slave, stands today not simply as the soul American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas. It has been neglected, it has been and is half despised, and above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood. But notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the negro people. Away back in the thirties, the melody of these slave songs stirred the nation, but the songs were soon half forgotten. Some, like near the lake where drooped the willow, passed into current heirs, and their source was forgotten. Others were caricatured on the minstrel stage, and their memory died away. Then in wartime came the singular port royal experiment after the capture of Hilton Head, and perhaps for the first time the North met the Southern slave face to face and heart to heart with no third witness. The sea islands of the Carolinas where they met were filled with a black folk of primitive type, touched and molded less by the world about them than any others outside the black belt. Their appearance was uncouth, their language funny, but their hearts were human, and their singing stirred men with a mighty power. Thomas Wentworth Higginson hastened to tell of these songs, and Miss McKim and others urged upon the world their rare beauty. But the world listened only half credulously, until the Fisk Jubilee singers sang the slave songs so deeply into the world's heart, that it can never wholly forget them again. There was once a blacksmith's son born at Cadiz, New York, who in the changes of time taught school in Ohio, and helped defend Cincinnati from Kirby Smith. Then he fought at Chancellorsville in Gettysburg, and finally served in the Freedmen's Bureau at Nashville. Here he formed a Sunday school class of black children in 1866, and sang with them and taught them to sing. And then they taught him to sing. And when once the glory of the Jubilee songs passed into the soul of George L. White, he knew his life work was to let those Negroes sing to the world, as they had sung to him. So in 1871 the pilgrimage of the Fisk Jubilee singers began. North to Cincinnati they rode, four half-clothed black boys and five girl women, led by a man with a cause and a purpose. They stopped at Wilberforce, the oldest of Negro schools, where a black bishop blessed them. Then they went, fighting cold and starvation, shut out of hotels and cheerfully sneered at. Ever northward, and ever the magic of their song kept thrilling hearts, until a burst of applause in the congregational council at Oberlin revealed them to the world. They came to New York, and Henry Ward Beechard dared to welcome them, even though the metropolitan dailies sneered at his nigger minstrels. So their songs conquered, till they sang across the land and across the sea, before Queen and Kaiser in Scotland and Ireland, Holland and Switzerland. Seven years they sang, and brought back $150,000 to found Fisk University. Since their day they have been imitated, sometimes will, by the singers of Hampton and Atlanta, sometimes ill, by straggling quartets. Caracature has sought again to spoil the quaint beauty of the music, and has filled the air with many debased melodies, which vulgar ears scarce know from the real. But the true Negro folk song still lives in the hearts of those who have heard them truly song, and in the hearts of the Negro people. What are these songs, and what do they mean? I know little of music, and can say nothing in technical phrase, but I know something of men, and knowing them I know that these songs are the articulate message of the slave to the world. They tell us in these eager days that life was joyous to the black slave, careless and happy. I can easily believe this of some, of many. But not all the past self, though it rose from the dead, can gain say the heart-touching witness of these songs. They are the music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment. They tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways. The songs are indeed the siftings of centuries. The music is far more ancient than the words, and in it we can trace here and there signs of development. My grandfather's grandmother was seized by an evil Dutch trader two centuries ago, and coming to the valleys of the Hudson and the Housatonic, black little and lithe, she shivered and shrank in the harsh north winds, looked longingly at the hills, and often crooned a heathen melody to the child between her knees, thus. Tuba na kuba gene, me gene, me. Tuba na kuba gene, me gene, me. Ten nuli nuli nuli nuli bendele. The child sang it to his children, and they to their children's children, and so two hundred years it has traveled down to us, and we sing it to our children, knowing as little as our fathers what its words may mean, but knowing well the meaning of its music. This was primitive African music. It may be seen in larger form in the strange chant which heralds the coming of John. You may bury me in the east, you may bury me in the west, but I'll hear the trumpet sound in that morning. The Voice of Exile. Ten master songs, more or less, one may pluck from the forest of melody songs, of undoubted Negro origin and wide popular currency, and songs peculiarly characteristic of the slave. One of these I have just mentioned. Another whose strains begin this book is nobody knows the trouble I've seen. When, struck with a sudden poverty, the United States refused to fulfill its promises of land to the freedmen, a brigadier general went down to the sea islands to carry the news. An old woman on the outskirts of the throng began singing this song. All the mash joined with her swaying, and the soldier wept. The third song is the cradle song of death which all men know, Swing low, sweet chariot, whose bars begin the life story of Alexander Kreml. Then there is the song of many waters, Roll Jordan Roll, A mighty chorus with minor cadences. There were many songs of the fugitive like that which opens the wings of Atlanta. And more familiar, been listening. The seventh is the song of the end and the beginning. My Lord, what a morning when the stars begin to fall. A strain of this is placed before the dawn of freedom. The song of groping, my way is cloudy, begins the meaning of progress. The ninth is the song of this chapter. Rest in Jacob, the day is a break-in. A pion of hopeful strife. The last master song is the song of songs. Steal away, sprung from the faith of the fathers. There are many others of the Negro folk songs as striking and characteristic as these. As for instance, the three strains in the third, eighth, and ninth chapters, and others I am sure could easily make a selection on more scientific principles. There are two songs that seem to be a step removed from the more primitive types. There is the maze-like medley, bright sparkles, one phrase of which heads the black belt. The Easter Carol, dust, dust, and ashes. The dirge, my mother's took her flight and gone home. And that burst of melody hovering over the passing of the first born, I hope my mother will be there in that beautiful world on high. These represent a third step in the development of the slave song, of which you may bury me in the east is the first, and songs like March On, Chapter Six, and Steal Away are the second. The first is African music, the second Afro-American, while the third is a blending of Negro music with the music heard in the foster land. The result is still distinctively Negro, and the method of blending original, but the elements are both Negro and Caucasian. One might go further and find a fourth step in this development, where the songs of white America have been distinctively influenced by the slave songs, or have incorporated whole phrases of Negro melody, as Swanny River and Old Black Joe. Side by side too with the growth has gone the debasements and imitations. The Negro minstrel songs, many of the gospel hymns, and some of the contemporary Kuhn songs, a mass of music in which the novice may easily lose himself and never find the real Negro melodies. In these songs I have said the slaves spoke to the world. Such a message is naturally veiled and half articulate. Words and music have lost each other, and new and can't phrases of a dimly understood theology have displaced the older sentiment. Once in a while we catch a strange word of unknown tongue, as the mighty meal which figures as a river of death. More often, slight words or a mere doggerel are joined to music of singular sweetness. Purely secular songs are few in number, partly because many of them were turned into hymns by a change of words, partly because the frolics were seldom heard by the stranger, and the music less often caught. Of nearly all the songs, however, the music is distinctively sorrowful. The ten master songs I have mentioned tell in word and music of trouble and exile, of strife and hiding. They groped towards some unseen power and sigh for rest in the end. The words that are left to us are not without interest, and cleared of evident dross, they conceal much of real poetry and meaning beneath conventional theology and unmeaning rhapsody. Like all primitive folk, the slaves stood near to nature's heart. Life was a rough and rolling sea like the brown Atlantic of the Sea Islands. The wilderness was the home of God, and the lonesome valley led to the way of life. Winter will soon be over was the picture of life and death to a tropical imagination. The sudden wild thunderstorms of the South awed and impressed the Negroes. At times the rumbling seemed to them mournful, at times imperious. My Lord calls me, He calls me by the thunder. The trumpet sounds it in my soul. The monotonous toil and exposure is painted in many words. Once He's the plowman in the hot, moist furrow singing, there's no rain to wet you, there's no sun to burn you. Oh, push along, believer, I want to go home. The bowed and bent old man cries with thrice-repeated wail. Oh, Lord, keep me from sinking down. And He rebukes the devil of doubt who can whisper, Jesus is dead and God's gone away. Yet the soul-hunger is there, the restlessness of the savage, the wail of the wanderer, and the plaint is put in one little phrase. My soul wants something that's new, that's new. Over the inner thoughts of the slaves and their relations one with another, the shadow of fear ever hung, so that we get but glimpses here and there, and also with them eloquent omissions and silences. Mother and child are song, but seldom father. Fugitive and weary wanderer call for pity and affection, but there is little of wooing and wedding. The rocks and the mountains are well-known, but home is unknown. Strange blending of love and helplessness sings through the refrain, yonder's my old mother, been wagon at the hill so long, about time she cross over, get home by and by. Elsewhere comes the cry of the motherless and the farewell, farewell, my only child. Love songs are scarce and fall into two categories, the frivolous and light and the sad. Of deep successful love there is ominous silence, and in one of the oldest of these songs there is a depth of history and meaning. Poor Rosie, poor girl, poor Rosie, poor girl, Rosie breaks my poor heart, Heaven shall not be my home. A black woman said of the song, it can't be sung without a full heart and a troubled spirit. The same song sings here that sings in the German folk song. Yitzge e ans Brunella trink abernet. Of death the negro showed little fear, but talked of it familiarly, and even fondly has simply a crossing of the waters, perhaps who knows, back to his ancient forests again. Later days transfigured his fatalism, and amid the dust and dirt the toiler sang, Dust, dust and ashes, fly over my grave, but the Lord shall bear my spirit home. The things evidently borrowed from the surrounding world undergo characteristic change when they enter the mouth of the slave, especially as this true of Bible phrases. Weep, oh captive daughter of Zion, quaintly turned into Zion weep aloe, and the wheels of Ezekiel are turned every way into the mystic dreaming of the slave till he says, there's a little wheel at turnin' into my heart. As in olden time the words of these hymns were improvised by some leading minstrel of the religious band. The circumstances of the gathering, however, the rhythm of the songs and the limitations of allowable thought confined the poetry for the most part to single or double lines, and they seldom were expanded to quatrains or longer tales, although there are some few examples of sustained efforts, chiefly paraphrases of the Bible. Three short series of verses have always attracted me. The one that heads this chapter, of one line of which Thomas Wentworth Higginson has fittingly said, Never it seems to me, since man first lived and suffered, was his infinite longing for peace uttered more plaintively. The second and third are descriptions of the last judgment. The one, a light improvisation with some traces of outside influence. Oh, the stars and the elements are falling and the moon drips away into blood and the ransomed of the Lord are returning unto God. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And the other earlier and homelier picture from the low coast lands. Michael hauled the boat ashore. Then you'll hear the horn they blow, then you'll hear the trumpet sound, trumpet sound the world round, trumpet sound for rich and poor, trumpet sound the jubilee, trumpet sound for you and me. Through all the sorrow of the sorrow songs there breeds a hope, a faith in the ultimate justice of things. The minor cadences of despair change often to triumph and calm confidence. Sometimes it is faith in life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurance of boundless justice in some fair world beyond, but whichever it is, the meaning is always clear, that sometimes, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins. Is such a hope justified? Do the sorrow songs sing true? The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is passed and that the backward races of today are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving. Such an assumption is the arrogance of people's irreverence toward time and ignorant of the deeds of men. A thousand years ago such an assumption, easily possible, would have made it difficult for the Tutan to prove his right to life. Two thousand years ago such dogmatism readily welcome would have scouted the idea of race as ever leading civilization. So woefully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of swift and slow and human doing and the limits of human perfectibility are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science. Why should Escalus have sung two thousand years before Shakespeare was born? Why has civilization flourished in Europe and flickered, flamed, and died in Africa? So long as the world stands meekly dumb before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its ignorance and unhallowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity to those who brought the sorrow songs to the seats of the mighty? Your country! How came it yours? Before the pilgrims landed we were here. Here we have brought our 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 centered for thrice a hundred years. Out of the nation's heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that 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. Nor has our gift of the spirit been merely passive. Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and wolf of this nation. We fought their battles, shared their sorrows, wrangled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to despise not justice, mercy and truth lest the nation be smitten with a curse. Our song, our toil, our cheer and warning have been given to this nation in blood brotherhood. Are not these gifts worth the giving? Is not this work and striving? Would America have been America without her Negro people? Even so is the hope that sang in the songs of my father's well song. If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells eternal good, pitiful yet masterful, then and on in his good time America shall rend the veil and the prison shall go free. Free, free as the sunshine trickling down the morning into these high windows of mine, free as yonder fresh young voices welling up to me from the caverns of brick and mortar below, swelling with song, instinct with life, tremulous treble and darkening bass. My children, my little children are singing to the sunshine, and thus they sing. Let us cheer the weary traveler, let us cheer the weary traveler, let us cheer the weary traveler along the heavenly way. And the traveler girds himself and sets his face toward the morning and goes his way. The afterthought, hear my cry, O God the reader. Thou saith that this my book fall not stillborn into the world-wilderness. Let there spring, gentle one, from out its leaves vigor of thought and thoughtful deed to reap the harvest wonderful. Let the ears of the guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy million sigh for the righteousness of such exalted nations in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare. Thus in thy good time may infinite reason turn the tangle straight, and these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed the end. This ends The Reading of the Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The text and music of this book are in the public domain, and were recorded by Toria's uncle.