Music Review: American Negro Slave Songs

Tobacco crops.

In observance of Black American History Month, Land of Books and Honey has found this album, American Negro Slave Songs, by Alex Foster and Michael LaRue on Freegal. This album can be used by educators, parents, students, and artists. This album can be used for academic research as a secondary source. If you have access to Freegal through your library, you can download five MP3 songs per week. At the end of this review, you can click on some links that will lead you to some YouTube videos, so you can listen to some of the songs.

The album contains eleven songs. They are as follows: “John Henry,” “Look Over Yonder,” “Hush, Somebody’s Calling My Name,” “Hey Everybody,” “You Gonna Reap,” “I’m Packing Up,” “March On,” “Voo-Doo American,” “Raise a Ruckus,” “Hold On,” and “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” Five of the songs mentions “freedom”: “Hush, Somebody’s Calling My Name,” “I’m Packing Up,” “Raise a Ruckus,” “Hold On,” and “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” Most of the songs have very simple, repetitive lyrics. Some parts of the lyrics are unintelligible, so I could not interpret the full meaning of the songs. The songs use at least one stringed instrument and various percussion instruments.

“John Henry” is about a legendary folk hero, who was a steel-driver for the railroads. The “John Henry” song sounded as if it began with a bass and added another stringed instrument as the song progressed. I did not understand everything in the lyrics, but the full legend of John Henry was not completely told in this song.

“I’m Packing Up” sounds as though Black American slaves equated death with freedom. One line said, “I want to meet my mother over there,” which means the singer spoke of a family reunion of a parent, who may have already died. In this song, death brings both a family reunion and freedom. This should be a testament of how brutal and psychologically detrimental formal American slavery was and continues to be for an entire race of people. Black Americans developed self-destructive or suicidal responses to human rights crimes that are passed on and inherited culturally with each successive generation. This music is only one example of how the majority groups implanted suicidal desires or self-destructive behaviors into the culture of Black American slaves and their descendants. Scholars and students can use these songs to study the continuity of the “slave mentality” within post-modern Black American culture and psychology today.

“Follow the Drinking Gourd” sounds like a secret instruction to tell a person to find the old man, who will “carry you to freedom.” I had previously learned in school that slaves passed secret messages in songs to each other on how to run away to the north and meet up with Underground Railroad conductors. However, the song mentions to the listener to follow the drinking gourd when the sun comes up and the moon goes down. Therefore, I can’t imagine anyone running away from slavery in the early morning when everyone is waking up. Another possible interpretation is that this song welcomes death as a path to freedom. Interpreting these songs are very difficult. They were probably passed on for generations, being forgotten and reimagined with new lyrics. Preserving Black American slaves’ folk culture for accuracy and posterity would be an interesting and challenging academic project for college students and professional researchers. A college student, who is majoring in music can preserve and perform Black American slave’ folk music for posterity. There is not a lot of competition in this field.

“Voo-Doo American” sounds as if it has three smaller songs inside of it. The first part of the song sounds as if the song is sung in a different language by two singers. The second part of it mentions “troubled water.” I hear isolated words and phrases such as “wide river,” “Mississippi,” “Muskegee” or “Muskogee,” “muddy back wash,” “trouble water,” “Jordan,” and “betwixt freedom,” but I can’t hear clear, coherent sentences to interpret what these words and phrases mean to each other. The third part of the song is about a man’s breaking up with a mean woman. Many of us are familiar with the famous folk singers Simon and Garfunkel, who has a song called, “Bridge over Troubled Waters.” Unless one is an ethno-musicologist, we cannot tell whether, “Voo-Doo American” is an authentic Black American slave song and if so, whether it had any influence over Simon and Garfunkel’s song, “Bridge over Troubled Water.” If anyone knows for sure, please feel free to inform the rest of us in the comments’ section.

“Hush, Somebody’s Calling My Name” seems to be a very famous song as demonstrated by the many gospel choirs and singers on YouTube. There are so many choirs and acapella groups singing different versions of this song. At some point, it appears that the part about “I’m so glad, I found my freedom in time” was replaced by “I’m so glad, I found my religion in time.” On one video, an acapella group did not even mention “freedom” or “religion.” Different singers are keeping the hook, “Hush, Somebody’s Calling My Name” and the melody of the original song, but they are replacing the rest of the lyrics, erasing the original meaning of the song. For students of history and culture, materials such as Alex Foster and Michael LaRue’s album, American Negro Slave Songs, need to be preserved in libraries and museums, because most of us don’t know where our popular music and culture come from. Knowing how this song’s original meaning has been removed from the song should motivate Black American slave descendants to preserve their slave culture in books, sheet music, CDs, DVDs, etc.

I highly recommend this album for an academic audience. Teachers and professors can break up the monotony of lectures about formal Black American slavery by playing this album in class, interpreting the lyrics, identifying instruments, and assessing the authenticity of Alex Foster and Michael LaRue’s interpretations of traditional Black American slave songs. Students can break up the monotony of citing books for their research papers about formal Black American slavery by citing this album and listing it in their bibliography of sources. College students, majoring in music, music history, musicology, ethno-musicology, anthropology, and folklore, can reproduce Black American slave music as sheet music or perform Black American slave music as a folk art for posterity. As I said before, there is little or no competition in this field.

In addition to other library resources, Black American parents can encourage their children to preserve the best aspects of Black American slave culture and teach their children not to feel ashamed about their slave heritage. The “African-American” label was imposed upon the Black American poor against their will and without consent by a wealthy population of self-hating Black elites and their non-Black partners in private industry and every level of the United States government. To resist cultural genocide by a multiracial, racist majority, Black American parents in poverty should seek out library resources such as this album, American Negro Slave Songs, by Alex Foster and Michael LaRue to augment their families’ education about their own heritage. If your local library does not possess this album and other materials like it, Black American parents need to start suggesting these rare items for their libraries to purchase. If there is no demand for Black American folk culture, the librarians will not invest in these folk arts and music materials for everyone to study and enjoy.

Black American artists can gain inspiration from this album, American Negro Slave Songs, by Alex Foster and Michael LaRue, to study their slave culture, preserve it, perform the best aspects of slave culture, and sell their own interpretations of Black American slave music for posterity. Black American street artists should be inspired by this album to preserve their music, dance, and crafts by selling CDs, DVDs, music downloads, or streaming videos to libraries and e-media contractors used by libraries. When people borrow library materials, the library borrower is getting a test drive for a future purchase of a book, CD, DVD, and e-media. If the borrowed library item is perceived as indispensable and invaluable, the borrower will purchase their own personal copy for their home library.

Most Americans do not listen to folk music. Most Americans are familiar with the work of Simon and Garfunkel and Paul Simon’s solo music. There is little or no recent popular competition in the field of folk music, so Black American artists should consider carving a niche for themselves in the performance and preservation of Black American slaves’ folk arts and culture. If Black Americans don’t use their own Slave heritage of arts and crafts, some other group of people will take it and profit from it.

Reference

Foster, Alex and Michael Larue. American Negro Slave Songs. 1973. Tradition Music. E-music. Web. Freegal. 23 February 2018.

Links:

YouTube: “I’m Packing Up,” American Negro Slave Songs by Alex Foster and Michael LaRue

YouTube: “Voo-Doo American,” American Negro Slave Songs by Alex Foster and Michael LaRue

YouTube: “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” American Negro Slave Songs by Alex Foster and Michael LaRue

YouTube: “Hush, Somebody’s Calling My Name,” American Negro Slave Songs by Alex Foster and Michael LaRue

YouTube: “John Henry,” American Negro Slave Songs by Alex Foster and Michael LaRue

YouTube: Choir Of Saint Joseph, Pensacola, Florida – Hush (Somebody’s Calling My Name)

YouTube: Rita Allen, JSU “Hush, Somebody’s calling My Name”

YouTube: 4Play , an acappella group at Lawrence University, singing at LU’s annual Night of Acappella, “Hush, Somebody’s Calling My Name.”

YouTube: Concert Choir Performance of “Hush, Somebody’s Calling My Name” at Saint Malachy’s in NYC, April 25th 2015 for the National Catholic High School Choral Festival