Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1918 — MOODS OF NEGRO FOLK-SONGS [ARTICLE]

MOODS OF NEGRO FOLK-SONGS

Gayest to Most Profoundly Tragic Disposition Is to Be Found Under the Religious Veil. The negro sought a channel for artistic solace, into which he could throw the symbolism of his racial longing. He found it, notes a writer in , the New Republic, in the religion brought to him by Protestant missionaries or tatight him by his masters. Here he was free to dream his dreams and create his visions of future happiness, for no master could punish him for praising God. Thus he “found religion,” and in religion he found no mood of his simple soul unnourished. It is, then, not so hard to understand why the negro’s, folk-song is. In its superficial form, so predominantly religious. The “spirituals” of the camp meeting show a quite une<?clesiastical variety of style and mood, a variety, in fact, coextensive with the emotional range of simple peasant life, 'these Include lively dances, bitter laments, paerfns of joy and majestic organlike anthems. In the Bible stories which are retold id ballad form In some of the spirituals the negro found expression for his buoyant, genial humor. Nearly ail the familiar moods of folk-song, from the gayest to the most profoundly tragic are to be found under the religious veil which permitted the slave to live his own varied emotional life without interference from his master.