Read Ebook: The Land of the Black Mountain: The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro by Prance Gerald Wyon Reginald

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Ebook has 318 lines and 17542 words, and 7 pages

Police got into auto An' started to chase that coon, They run 'im from six in the mo'nin', Till seven that afternoon.

The coon he run so bloomin' fas' Till fire come from his heels, He scorched the cotton an' burnt the corn, An' cut a road through farmers' fiel's.

Perhaps the most striking observation that comes from the whole experience is the seemingly inexhaustible supply of songs among the workaday Negroes of the South. We have yet to find a "bottom" or a limit in the work songs among the crowds of working men in one community. Just as often as there is opportunity to hear a group of Negroes singing at work, just so often have we found new songs and new fragments. There is so far no exception to this rule. Likewise we have yet to find an individual, whose efforts have been freely set forth in the offering of song, whose supply of songs has been exhausted. Time and time again the approach has been made, with the response, "Naw, sir, cap'n, I don't know no songs much," with an ultimate result of song after song, seemingly with no limit. Partly the singer is honest; he does not at the time, think of many songs nor does he consider himself a good singer; but when he turns himself "loose" his capacity for memory and singing is astonishing.

Very few of the popular songs which we heard twenty years ago are found now in the same localities. The places that knew them will know them no more. The same disappearing process is going on now, only more rapidly than formerly because of the multitude of blues, jazz songs, and others being distributed throughout the land in millions of phonographic records. One of the first tasks of this volume is, therefore, to take cognizance of these formal blues, both in their relation to the workaday native creations and as an important segment of the Negro's music and his contribution to the American scene. In the next chapter we shall proceed, therefore, to discuss the blues.

THE BLUES: WORKADAY SORROW SONGS

No story of the workaday song life of the Negro can proceed far without taking into account the kind of song known as the blues, for, next to the spirituals, the blues are probably the Negro's most distinctive contribution to American art. They have not been taken seriously, because they have never been thoroughly understood. Their history needs to be written. The present chapter is not a complete statement. It merely presents some of the salient points in the story of the blues and offers some suggestions as to their r?le in Negro life.

Behind the popular blues songs of today lie the more spontaneous and na?ve songs of the uncultured Negro. Long before the blues were formally introduced to the public, the Negro was creating them by expressing his gloomy moods in song. To be sure, the present use of the term "blues" to designate a particular kind of popular song is of recent origin, but the use of the term in Negro song goes much further back, and the blue or melancholy type of Negro secular song is as old as the spirituals themselves. The following song might be taken at first glance for one of the 1926 popular "hits," but it dates back to the time of the Civil War.

I'm gwine to Alabamy,--Oh, For to see my mammy,--Ah.

She went from ole Virginny,--Oh, And I'm her pickaniny,--Ah.

She lives on the Tombigbee,--Oh, I wish I had her wid me,--Ah.

Now I'm a good big nigger,--Oh, I reckon I won't git bigger,--Ah.

But I'd like to see my mammy,--Oh, Who lives in Alabamy,--Ah.

Very few of the Negro's ante-bellum secular songs have been preserved, but there is every reason to suppose that he had numerous melancholy songs aside from the spirituals. At any rate, the earliest authentic secular collections abound in the kind of songs which have come to be known as the blues. The following expressions are typical of the early blues. They are taken from songs collected in Georgia and Mississippi between 1905 and 1908, and they were doubtless common property among the Negroes of the lower class long before that.

Went to the sea, sea look so wide, Thought about my babe, hung my head an' cried. O my babe, won't you come home?

I got the blues, but too damn mean to cry, Oh, I got the blues, but I'm too damn mean to cry.

Got nowhar to lay my weary head, O my babe, got nowhar to lay my weary head.

I'm po' boy long way from home, Oh, I'm po' boy long way from home.

Ever since I left dat country farm, Ev'ybody been down on me.

Here are blues in the making. This is the stuff that the first published blues were made of, and some of it sounds strikingly like certain of the latest blues records issued by the phonograph companies. About 1910 the first published blues appeared, and since that time they have been exploited in every imaginable form by music publishers and phonograph companies. The inter-relations between the formal blues and the native blues will be discussed later. At present it is necessary to take up certain questions concerning the nature of the blues.

What are the characteristics of the native blues, in so far as they can be spoken of as a type of song apart from other Negro songs? The original blues were so fragmentary and elusive--they were really little more than states of mind expressed in song--that it is difficult to characterize them definitely. The following points, then, are merely suggestive.

In the first place, blues are characterized by a tone of plaintiveness. Both words and music give the impression of loneliness and melancholy. In fact, it was this quality, combined with the Negro's peculiar use of the word "blues," which gave the songs their name. In the second place, the theme of most blues is that of the love relation between man and woman. There are many blues built around homesickness and hard luck in general, but the love theme is the principal one. Sometimes the dominant note is the complaint of the lover:

Goin' 'way to leave you, ain't comin' back no mo', You treated me so dirty, ain't comin' back no mo'.

Where was you las' Sattaday night, When I lay sick in bed? You down town wid some other ol' girl, Wusn't here to hol' my head.

Sometimes it is a note of longing:

I hate to hear my honey call my name, Call me so lonesome and so sad.

I believe my woman's on that train, O babe, I believe my woman's on that train.

At other times the dominant note is one of disappointment:

I thought I had a friend was true; Done found out friends won't do.

All I hope in this bright worl', If I love anybody, don't let it be a girl.

A third characteristic of the blues is the expression of self pity. Often this is the outstanding feature of the song. There seems to be a tendency for the despondent or blue singer to use the technique of the martyr to draw from others a reaction of sympathy. Psychologically speaking, the technique consists of rationalization, by which process the singer not only excuses his shortcomings, but attracts the attention and sympathy of others--in imagination, at least--to his hard lot. The following expressions will make the point clear.

Bad luck in de family, sho' God, fell on me, Good ol' boy, jus' ain't treated right.

Poor ol' boy, long ways from home, I'm out in dis wide worl' alone.

Out in dis wide worl' to roam, Ain't got no place to call my home.

Now my mama's dead and my sweet ol' popper too, An' I ain't got no one fer to carry my troubles to.

If I wus to die, little girl, so far away from home, The folks, honey, for miles around would mourn.

Now it is apparent to any one familiar with the folk songs of various peoples that the blues type, as it has been described above, is not peculiar to the Negro, but is more or less common to all races and peoples. So far as subject matter and emotional expression are concerned, the lonesome songs of the Kentucky mountaineer, of the cowboy, of the sailor, or of any other group, are representative of the blues type. If this be so, then why was it that the Negro's song alone became the basis for a nationally popular type of song? The answer to this question is, of course, far from simple. For one thing, the whole matter of the Negro's cultural position in relation to the white man is involved. The Negro's reputation for humor and good singing is also important. Perhaps, too, the psychology of fads would have to be considered. But, speaking in terms of the qualities of the songs themselves, what is there about them to account for the superior status enjoyed by the Negro's melancholy songs?

To begin with, the Negro's peculiar use of the word "blues" in his songs was a circumstance of no mean importance. Much more significant, however, was the music of the blues. The blues originated, of course, with Negroes who had access to few instruments other than the banjo and the guitar. But such music as they brought forth from these instruments to accompany their blues was suited to the indigo mood. It was syncopated, it was full of bizarre harmonies, sudden changes of key and plaintive slurs. It was something new to white America, and it needed only an introduction to insure its success.

But there is still another feature of the blues which is probably responsible more than any other one thing for their appeal and fascination, and that is their lack of conventionality, their na?vet? of expression. The Negro wastes no time in roundabout or stilted modes of speech. His tale is brief, his metaphor striking, his imagery perfect, his humor plaintive. Expressions like the following have made the blues famous.

Looked down the road jus' far as I could see, Well, the band did play "Nearer, My God to Thee."

Well, I started to leave an' I got 'way down the track; Got to thinkin' 'bout my woman, come a-runnin' back.

Wish to God some ol' train would run, Carry me back where I came frum.

I laid in jail, back to the wall: Brown skin gal cause of it all.

When the first published blues appeared, the problem for the student of Negro song began to become complicated. It is no longer possible to speak with certainty of the folk blues, so entangled are the relations between them and the formal compositions. This inter-relation is itself of such interest and importance that it demands the careful attention of students of folk song. Only a few points can be touched upon in the present work, but an attempt will be made at least to indicate some of the ramifications of the subject.

There is no doubt that the first songs appearing in print under the name of blues were based directly upon actual songs already current among Negroes. Soon after Handy began to issue his blues, white people as well as Negroes were singing them heartily. But a song was never sung long in its original version alone. The half-dozen stanzas of the original often grew to a hundred or more, for many singers took pride in creating new stanzas or adapting parts of other songs to the new one. Sometimes publishers would issue second and third editions, incorporating in them the best of the stanzas which had sprung up since the preceding edition. Thus, even before the phonograph became the popular instrument that it is today, the interplay between folk creations and formal compositions had become extremely complex.

In the last ten years the phonograph record has surpassed sheet music as a conveyor of blues to the public. Sheet music, however, is still important. In fact, practically every "hit" is issued in both the published and phonographed form. But the phonograph record obviously has certain advantages, and it is largely responsible for the present popularity of the blues. Most of the large phonograph companies now maintain special departments devoted to the recording of "race blues." They employ Negro artists, many of whom have already earned national reputations, and they advertise extensively, especially in the Negro press.

In spite of the extremes to which exploitation of the blues has gone in recent years, there is often an authentic folk element to be found in the present-day formal productions. Some of the phonograph artists are encouraged by their employers to sing blues of their own making. When the artist has had an intimate acquaintance with the life of his race and has grown up among the blues, so to speak, he is often able to produce a song which preserves faithfully the spirit of the folk blues. The folk productions of yesterday are likely to be found, albeit sometimes in versions scarcely recognizable, on the phonograph records of today. That this is the case is indicated by the following comparison of a few of the lines and titles of songs collected twenty years ago with lines and titles of recent popular blues songs.

LINES AND TITLES OF SONGS LINES AND TITLES OF RECENT COLLECTED TWENTY YEARS POPULAR BLUES AGO

When a blues record is issued it quickly becomes the property of a million Negro workers and adventurers who never bought it and perhaps never heard it played. Sometimes they do not even know that the song is from a record. They may recognize in it parts of songs long familiar to them and think that it is just another piece which some songster has put together. Their desire to invent a different version, their skill at adapting stanzas of old favorites to the new music, and sometimes their misunderstanding of the words of the new song, result in the transformation of the song into many local variants. In other words, the folk creative process operates upon a song, the origin of which may already be mixed, and produces in turn variations that may later become the bases of other formal blues. A thorough exposition of this process would take us far beyond the limits of this volume, but the following instances are cited to illustrate generally the interplay between the folk blues and the formal blues.

Here is a specimen captured from a Negro girl in Georgia who had just returned from a trip to "Troit," Michigan.

When you see me comin' Throw yo' woman out de do', For you know I's no stranger, For I's been dere once befo'.

He wrote me a letter, Nothin' in it but a note. I set down an' writ him, "I ain't no billy goat."

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