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Preface |
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into concerted activity by original and beautifully phrased songs, who owns a farm and a white cottage by the side of the road and yet has time to be the pastor of two country churches: "I collected $7.45 last Sunday, all mine; the Lord owns the whole world, He don't need no money."
Lightning, a dynamic black Apollo song-leader, called "Lightnin' " by his comrades because ahe thinks so fast he can git around any of them white bosses," who sings "Ring, Old Hammer" so realistically that one can see the old blacksmith shop with swinging bellows and hear again the cheerful ring of the forgotten anvil.
Willie Williams, who could sing holler at his mules ("Don't 'low me to beat 'em, got to beg 'em along") or lead spirituals with equal power and fervor.
Dobie Red, Track Horse, Jim Cason, Big Nig, and many another Negro prisoner, from whom we have obtained our noblest songs.
Vera Hall and Dock Reed, cousins, who can sing all the unique spirituals that seem to have emerged from the countryside about Livingston, Alabama, the beauty of whose singing has been made known to the world through the interest and devotion of Mrs. Ruby Pickens Tartt.
Clear Rock (Texas), Kelly Page (Arkansas), and Roscoe McLean (Arkansas) are other unsurpassed song leaders.
Seldom does ont discern in these folk a delicate concern "with the creation of an imaginary world peopled with characters quite as wonderful, in their way, as the elfin creations of Spenser." * Nor does one find in them an overwhelming desire to forget themselves and everything that reminds them of their everyday life. The American singer has been concerned with themes close to his everyday experience, with the emotions of ordinary men and women who were fighting for freedom and for a living in a violent new world. His songs have been strongly rooted in his life and have functioned there as enzymes to assist in the digestion of hardship, solitude, violence, hunger, and the honest comradeship of democracy.
The songs in this book, therefore, have been given a roughly "functional" arrangement—that is, according to the way they grew up and lived in the American community. The first half of the book contains those songs that have been sung in a normal community by or for or before men, women, and children—i.e., religious songs, dance songs, lullabies, love songs, and ballads. The last half contains those songs which grew up in circles mostly male, and were male in content and audience—the occupational songs and ballads, the work songs \ and those songs which grew up in groups where the exceeding hardness and bitterness of existence tended to obliterate distinctions—the blues and songs of drink, gambling, and crime.
* English Folk Songs of the Southern Affalachians^ by Cecil Sharp and Maude Karpeles, p. xxxvii.
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