The DeLamar nugget. [volume] (DeLamar, Idaho) 1891-1900, 1891-05-19
THE NEGRO'S SONG.
It Breathes Sadness Induced by
the Wrongs His Race Has Borne.
No other Music Can Match 1t In MeIan-
choly Sweetness, and 1t Was the Only
Thing That Slavery Left Iim-Rea-
sons for Its Excellence.

white traveller lay tossing in the ago
mics of tropical fever. Sometimes in
his delirium he murmured broken
fragments of Scottish songs-some-
times, as the pangs of the fever mo-
mentarily abated, the sound of the
tbagpipes seemed to ring in his ears,
and, reused to semi-consciousness by
the sweet illusion, the sick man would
rise from his couch of reeds and cry:
<'Play the Blue Bells of Scotland,
piper-play the Blue Bells'"
Then woman, dark of face, and
clad only in blue cotton skirt, entered
the hut. Sitting down beside the in
valid she began to softly Groom song
of wondrous melody. In the music of
that African song pathos, sympathy
and anxiety seemed to blend with hope
and confidence, while the sound, ever
soft and low, touched gently the ears of
the sufferer, and soothed him to rest
and sleep, from which he awolle, weak,
but free from the fever's grasp.
Thattraveler, says the Chicago Globe.
was Mango Park. In his memoirs he
says 81 am firmly convinced that the
soft music Of that negro womans song
saved my life and gave me new strength
for my undertaking."
How or when the negro acquired his
!. loye of music history cannot tell He
rodotus tells of the sounding bows" of
the Ethiopians- black bows whose
strings gave out a melody sweeter than
the notes of Tyre or cithera, and which
were in great demand at festivals. In
- 4. Il, L
were noted for their musical skill, and
the chroniclers of the middle ages often
speak of the sable musicians who de-
lighted the lordly Saracens with their
talent In the strange, mysterious
land of Africa the negro has little to
do and abundance wherewith to sup
port life Doubtless, in the earlier ages,
he lounged about his hut day after day,
until at last from sheer ennui, he turned
to music as a means of employing his
idle time. AS the centuries rolled on
the black became more ard more /
skilled in musical art until, when his |
race first began to see The shores OF
America, he was already vocal and in
strumental genius of high merit
But it was among the negro slaves
that the '.divine art" reached its Per
fiction. The poor African, torn from
his native land, and sent from case End |
idleness to hard work, under a c,eaes-
ing master, could not express his
thoughts in the ordinary language of
common conversation, but iill ti1c pa /!
thos, all the sorrow of his icisfortllacG
and his surroundings, acting r2}on his
sensitive and romantic nature, com
bined to produce type of song which
the world has never seen surpassed.
Perhaps a wife or child void be sold K
into servitude, far away from The poe
slave who composed the song; perhaps
a kindly master would pass beyond
deaths river; perhaps the slave himself
would be sent into distant state,
never again to see the home which he'd ,
become dear to him by countless tics. :
but, whatever the cause, the negro
songs remain matchless in their ,
sweetness, marvellous in r
their patient resignation to fate and
''massa's" will. !
But there were CLEANS of light and s
happiness in the life of the slave. In '
the evening, when the work was over, I
LllC WOlld doSClADIC Ill OIlC
quarters" and, while the 'possum and l
the hoe cake, the sweet potatoes and z
the corn were being cooked to perfec-
tion by the slillful ''aunties, the fiddle
and the banjo sounded merrily and the I
lproarious chorus mingled with the +
shuttle of the dancing feet. q
From these festive occasions sprang O
,he idea of negro minstrelsy, which has t
since become so distorted that not one a
person in fifty north of Mason and Dix D
'ns line has any idea of real plantation e
music or of the real depth and richness s.
II those unique and matchless melodies. a
Since the war the negro has been free, G.
tut he has not forgotten his music, and D
lie, and his descendants, even those in S;
whose veins fingers hardly drop OF
Iegro blood, still sing the songs that 9,
nee delighted young massa" and rose O,
ably around ''old massa's" grave. But II
ven among the negroes there was cl
great variety of music, tinged by local Ii
", of course, and often by the ances- Il
raj tribe of the negro. Thus in New tc
rleans the blacks had list Of songs tc
luch different from the music of Vir- n
ina or the Carolinas. The songs of fl,
arolina dwelt upon cotton lands and AZ
ce fields; those of Louisiana less upon re
lateral surroundings and more upon di
and love. nj
Much French blood ran in the veins of Ia
lese people and their music showed th
lie combination of races. Even now, in &C
ouisiana, the creole women-women of
hom southefher once SAID that they
ere the most beautiful in the world
e quadroons and octoroons, chant m