Exploring American Folk Music

by Kip Lornell

  I’m a-going to tell you about the coming of the savior

  Refrain: In that great getting-up morning, fare you well,

  fare you well!

  The Lord spoke to Gabriel.

  Refrain

  Go look behind the altar.

  Refrain

  Take down the silver trumpet.

  Refrain

  Blow your trumpet, Gabriel.

  Refrain

  Lord, how loud shall I blow it?

  Refrain

  Blow it right and easy.

  Refrain

  Do not alarm my people.

  Refrain

  Tell’em to come to judgment.

  Refrain

  Gabriel, blow your trumpet.

  Refrain

  Lord, how loud shall I blow it?

  Refrain

  Loud as seven peals of thunder.

  Refrain

  Wake up the living nations.

  Refrain

  * * *

  MUSICAL EXAMPLE

  Livingstone, Alabama, was home to Dock Reed, an exceptionally powerful singer with a vast storehouse of African American folk songs who was born late in the nineteenth century. Reed had first recorded for the Library of Congress several times between 1937 and 1941. In the middle 1950s folk songs collector Harold Courlander “rediscovered” Reed while he was surveying black folk music in central Alabama. Courlander recorded Reed in great depth, further documenting his stories as well as Reed’s magnificent voice and his nineteenth-century spirituals.

  Title “Jesus Goin’ to Make Up My Dying Bed”

  Performer Dock Reed

  Instrument one voice

  Length 1:15

  Musical Characteristics

  1. His a cappella voice means this piece has a monophonic texture.

  2. The melody is conjunctive and quite smooth.

  3. Reed displays a marvelous control over the vibratto in his voice.

  4. A “rise” in his voice of a fifth can be heard at the beginning of the first phrase of the first verse (the extended “Oh . . .”) and at several other points.

  5. The song is in an aaab form.

  Oh, don’t you worry ‘bout me dyin’!

  Oh, don’t worry ‘bout me dyin’!

  Oh, worry ‘bout me dying’!

  Jesus goin’ to make up my dyin’ bed.

  Oh, I been in this valley! (repeat twice)

  Jesus goin’ to make up my dyin’ bed.

  Ah, when you see me dyin’

  I don’t want you to cry.

  All I want you to do for me

  Just low my dyin’ head.

  Ah, I’m sleepin’ on Jesus!

  Ah, sleepin’ on Jesus!

  Oh, I’m sleepin’ on Jesus!

  Jesus goin’ to make up my dyin’ bed!

  This selection is from Smithsonian Folkways 4418.

  * * *

  Spiritual texts are often characterized as sad or even sorrowful. They usually lament the trials and difficulties of a life that was made doubly difficult by slavery. Songs such as “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” and “Roll Jordan” are two well-known spirituals. The refrain “Motherless children have hard time when their mother’s dead” exemplifies the motifs of loss and separation. Death and escape are two other recurring themes found in spirituals, and it is often suggested that such themes serve a dual purpose. One purpose is to lament earthly hardships and the peace of dying and eternal life, while the other is a code or a phrase with a double or hidden meaning. They could also express the hope of stealing away from slavery and the freedom of the North. In later years, particularly during the most recent civil rights movement that began in the 1950s, spirituals were sung to protest economic and social conditions in the South with refrains about “crossing the River of Jordan” and creating a new vision of America.

  The earliest spiritual collection Slave Songs of the United States (1867) by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison includes some well-known spirituals that continue to be sung: “Old Ship of Zion,” “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,” and “Get on Board, Children.” Their transcriptions only hint at the complex rhythms and vocal qualities of the songs, while suggesting that early black spirituals used slightly flattened notes, generally the third, fifth, and seventh. The authors readily admit that they could not reduce to standard Western notation all of the various shadings, anticipations, and slurs that they heard, but their admission clearly underscores that some of the vocal techniques heard in gospel music and work songs were present in the spirituals of the 1860s.

  Spirituals were most often performed by a small group that accompanied and supported its leader. In addition to call and response, some of these hymns were lined out. By the late nineteenth century, however, spirituals were commonly found in hymnals and in other printed sources. Their arrangements grew more elaborate, were written in four-part harmony, and moved further from the folk practices. The “jubilee” groups sent out by Fisk, Hampton, Tuskegee, and other pioneering colleges for black and Native Americans included singers trained in Western musical practices. They were also concertizing, rather than performing for a group of peers in a sacred setting. These factors helped set jubilee singing groups apart from their sacred counterparts, both in context and performance style.

  Still occasionally performed, spirituals have been an important part of black folk culture for approximately 150 years and are still found in the repertoire of many small black church groups and choirs. Even African American singers trained in the European tradition, such as Leontyne Price, occasionally perform and record spirituals. Rising from the musical culture of camp meetings and other evangelical forums, spirituals helped to guide the way for the gospel songs that developed at the dawn of the twentieth century.

  RING SHOUTS

  A ring shout, one of the earliest forms of African American religious practice, combines physical movement with song. These songs are almost always spirituals. A ring shout is reminiscent of some West African religious ceremonies and remains one of the closest and clearest connections between black American and African folk culture. Arguably the oldest form of Afro-American folk music to be heard today, ring shouts are one way that participants have of communicating directly with God through spontaneous movement and singing.

  The concept of divine communication links those who take part in a ring shout with adherents to Pentecostal beliefs in many ways. First, both services are of indeterminate length—they last as long as the spirit of the Holy Ghost is present. Second, physical movement (sometimes called a holy dance) is an integral part of a ring shout and a Pentecostal church service. Third, rhythm is at the heart of both services: men and women use body percussion at a ring shout, while a band (usually augemented by syncopated clapping, tambourines, and other handheld percussion) holds forth at a Pentecostal church. Finally, these spontaneous events eschew printed programs that tell you the service’s precise order.

  Once found across much of the South, ring shouts are now geographically limited and remain part of religious services in a few islands just off the coast where Georgia and South Carolina meet. These islands have only been easily accessible to the mainland since about 1930 when the first bridges and causeways were built. With a black population that once constituted 90 percent of the local population, the people of the sea islands are almost all descendants of cotton plantation slaves. This combination of factors has made the sea islands a stronghold for folk culture including Gullah (a creolized language that retains ties with its African roots) speech, folk tales, and ring shouts.

  Contemporary ring shouts are held in special “praise houses” where the faithful regularly gather. The “watch meetings” that draw the greatest number of attendees are held at Christmas and Easter. Most participants have moved past middle age; very few are under the age of forty. These are primarily song services without a sermon or separate choir to sing. The singing is done by a “band” of vocalists—a lead singer and responden
ts whose songs are almost always antiphonal. The songs themselves are perhaps best characterized as spirituals. Vocal bands, by the way, are still found today in some southern and northern Pentecostal churches. After a long period of singing spirituals such as “Savior Do Not Pass Me By,” the ring shout begins.

  The Southern Wonders, a Memphis gospel quartet, broadcast over WDIA in the early 1950s. Courtesy of Kip Lornell.

  Although not all of the worshipers actually get up and move, some shuffle around. Their feet are not supposed to cross nor be lifted from the ground—just as the worshipers are in direct contact with God, their contact with the earth is equally constant. During the shout people are singing, speaking ecstatically (in tongues), and clapping polyrhythmically. Most of the participants are able to carry on three different rhythms simultaneously with their feet, hands, and voice. Ring shouts can last for hours and the important ones often last all night.

  The following description of a Christmas shout from an elementary school in 1865 illustrates that this religious practice has changed little in over one hundred years:

  The children move around in a circle, backwards, or sideways, with their feet and arms keeping energetic time, and their whole bodies undergoing most extraordinary contortions, while they sing at the top of their voice the refrain. (Pearson Letters from Port Royal, 292–93, quoted in Epstein)

  * * *

  MUSICAL EXAMPLE

  This ring shout was recorded at a workshop in Mississippi, but it captures the atmosphere and passion of a sea islands prayer service. Singers from the Moving Star Hall on John’s Island near Charleston, South Carolina, have kept this very emotional singing alive for many decades. During the 1960s, when this performance was recorded, the group toured the United States, appearing at the Newport Folk Festival and many other smaller events. This tradition and the singers face a new challange as their islands are developed for the tourist and retirement trade, which is exemplified by the Hilton Head Resort; today the sea islands are mostly white.

  Title “Talking ’bout a Good Time”

  Performer Benjamin Bligen (leader)

  Instruments four voices

  Length 1:11

  Musical Characteristics

  1. You hear a cappella singing accompanied by syncopated hand clapping.

  2. There is an acceleration in tempo during the final third of the performance.

  3. It is an antiphonal arrangement with unison singing in the chorus.

  4. There is a crescendo in dynamic level toward the middle of the performance.

  Call: Good time, a good time

  Response: We gonna have a time! (x6)

  Call: Singing for a good time

  Response: We gonna have a time! (x2)

  Call: Shouting for a good time.

  Response: We gonna have a time! (x2)

  (Clapping begins and the tempo increases)

  Call: Good time, a good time

  Response: We gonna have a time! (x2)

  Call: Talking ’bout a good time.

  Response: We gonna have a time!

  Call: Good time, a good time.

  Response: We gonna have a time! (x2)

  This selection is from Smithsonian Folkways 40031.

  * * *

  GOSPEL

  Nineteenth-century folk music came from a variety of sources. The themes for the sermons of Baptist preachers draw their inspiration from the Bible and everyday experience, while choirs in AME churches often took their messages from the New Testament of the Bible. By the dawn of the twentieth century a new wellspring, the gospel song, began penetrating and affecting each of these genres. Spirituals arose from the devastating effects of slavery; their message of hope and of flight to a new land captured the attention of black Americans. Around the turn of the century, just as racism reemerged and blues, ragtime, and jazz began emerging, a younger generation of African Americans started composing simple “gospel” songs of praise. Within a decade these songs had attracted the attention of churchgoers and, significantly, sheet music and songbook publishers.

  Such compositions drew from the black secular and sacred experience to create something new. While hymns are directed toward God, the message of gospel songs is aimed at humankind. The term gospel is subject to a number of definitions. For some it refers to any type of sacred selection, implying that the phrases “gospel music” and “religious music” are interchangeable. Others divide religious music into more specific categories: hymns, spirituals, and jubilees. Hymns are older songs drawn from the published Protestant hymnals of the nineteenth century, also known as Dr. Watts’s hymns. They are sometimes lined out or even performed as solos. Spirituals refer to the largely antebellum songs of unknown authorship that passed through oral tradition. Themes of freedom, movement, and unburdening predominate. Their form is usually ab or verse/chorus. Jubilee has two distinctive meanings. The initial reference was to songs about freedom or release from slavery and the happiness at being set free. More specifically, they refer to the type of formalized spirituals performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers (among other groups) that emerged during Reconstruction. In the 1930s the term was reinvented in reference to up-tempo songs performed by black gospel quartets that feature vocal effects, high rhythmic interest, strong lead vocal, and a “pump” bass. The Golden Gate Quartet pioneered this style of jubilee gospel singing in the middle 1930s.

  The specific meaning of “gospel song” relates to the fact that it can be traced to a specific composer—Thomas A. Dorsey, Cleavant Derricks, Rev. C. A. Tindley, Rev. Herbert W. Brewster, or Lucie Campbell. These early gospel songs were also the first type of black sacred music to be transmitted first within small groups and then to a large audience by way of the printed mass media. Gospel songs and the more emotional performance techniques are sometimes found among both black and white performers—especially as the genre became more widespread in the 1930s. Moreover, some gospel songs by white composers such as Albert Brumley and Fannie Crosby became part of a shared black and white repertoire.

  * * *

  MUSICAL EXAMPLE

  This West Coast–based group had a successful pop music career in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Here they betray their roots in the Baptist church with this version of a spiritual-like song that, despite its title, is not related to Albert Brumley’s well-known gospel song. This style of gospel singing was first heard in the early 1950s. It features a “drive section” toward the middle of the song in which the chorus is repeated (“Do you feel like shouting?”) while the lead singer improvises. During this section they stay on the tonic chord both to spotlight the lead singer and as a means to heighten the tension and emotion of the song.

  Title “Before You Get to Heaven (I’ll Fly Away)”

  Performers The Chambers Brothers

  Instruments drums, guitar, and four voices

  Length 3:25

  Musical Characteristics

  1. A duple 2/4 meter is quickly established by the instruments.

  2. Call-and-response style is apparent between the lead singer and the chorus.

  3. Crescendo dynamics are featured during the drive section.

  4. There is a gently syncopated rhythm.

  5. The moderate tempo increases slightly.

  6. The shouting lead vocal includes a falsetto singing style.

  It’s a rough and rocky road, before you get to heaven. (x3)

  And I feel like shouting all the time.

  You have to cry sometimes, before you get to heaven. (x3)

  And I feel like shouting all the time.

  You have to pray sometimes, before you get to heaven. (x3)

  And I feel like shouting all the time.

  You got to love everybody, before you get to heaven. (x3)

  And I feel like shouting all the time.

  You have to moan sometimes, before you get to heaven. (x3)

  And I feel like shouting all the time.

  “Drive” section: Do you feel like shouting?

 
I feel like shouting!

  and so on.

  This selection is from Smithsonian Folkways 31008.

  * * *

  Early gospel songs incorporated bright imagery and simile to achieve their power and directness. In 1893 W. Henry Sherwood published The Harp of Zion, one of the earliest hymnals to use gospel songs. By the 1920s these newly minted gospel songs impinged upon all aspects of black religious music. This appears to be particularly true for the guitar evangelists, whose recorded repertoires are peppered with written compositions. Blind Willie Johnson, for example, recorded “Sweeter as the Years Go By,” written and published by C. H. Morris in 1912. Blind Joe Taggart, Washington Phillips, and others waxed C. A. Tindley’s 1916 song, “Leave It There” under the title “Take Your Burden to the Lord.” A 1909 composition by Benjamin Franklin Butts, “It’s All Right Now,” appeared to be a staple of Arizona Drane’s repertoire, as her accomplished recording in 1927 implies. Some of these songs had already entered into oral tradition by the 1920s, while others seem to have been learned from printed sources such as Gospel Pearls. The full flowering of gospel publishing did not occur until the 1930s and 1940s when these new compositions hit the black religious community with the force of atomic power.

  In the 1930s the gospel scene exploded. The works of the earlier gospel composers continued to gain popularity, primarily through their performances in church and the printed medium. Turn-of-the-century composing pioneers, such as Rev. C. A. Tindley, inspired the younger performers. By the early 1930s the commercial companies had expanded their recordings of sermons, vocal quartets, and guitar evangelists to include more of the increasingly popular gospel songs. “Georgia Tom” Dorsey, often referred to as the father of gospel music, emerged as the most influential of the early gospel performers whose work was heralded and greatly advanced by the mass media. Along with sisters Sallie Martin, Roberta Martin (no relation), and Willie Mae Ford Smith, this triumvirate soon revamped Chicago into the nodal point for the commercialization of gospel music in the African American community.