The St. Johns herald., 1891-09-03
THE NEGROES SONG.
It Breathes Q Sadness Induced by the Wrongs His Race Has Borne.
No Other Music Can Match It in MeIan- chpIy Sweetness, and It Was the Only Thing That Slavery Left IIim-Rea-
 sons for Its Excellence.

white traveller lay tossing in the ago. nies Of tropical fever. Sometimes in his delirium he murmured broken fragments Of Scottish songs-some- times, as. the bangs of the fever mo- raentarily abated, the sound of the bagpipes 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: 'sPlay the Blue Bells of Scotland,' piper-play the 'Blue Bells"
 Then a woman, dark of face, and clad only in Q blue cotton skirt, entered the hut. Sitting down beside the in- valid she began to softly croOn a 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 awol1e, weak, but free from the fevcr's grasp.
 That traveller, says the Chicago Globe, was Mungo Park. In his memoirs he says: q an firmly convinced that the soft music of that negro woman's song saved my life and gave me new strength for my undertaking"
 How or when the negro acquired his love of music history cannot tell. He rodotus tells of the sounding bows" of the Ethiopians-black bows whose strings gave out melody sweeter than the notes of Tyre or cithera, and which were in great demand at festivals. In Roman times the Mauritanian blacks were noted for their musical skill, and the chroniciers 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 whcrewith 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 and more skilled in musical ant until, when his race first began to see the shores of America, he was already a vocal and in- strumental genius of high merit.
 But it was among the negro slaves that the ''divine art' reached it's per lection. The poor African, torn from his native land, and sent from ease and idlencss to hard work, under an exact ing master, could not express his thoughts in the ordinary language of common conversation, but all the pa thos, all the sorrow of his misfoTtunes and his surroundings, acting upon his sensitive and romantic nature, com bined to produce a type of song which the world has never seen surpassed. Perhaps a wife or child would be sold into servitude, far away from the poor slave who composed the song; perhaps n kindly master would pass beyond deaths river; perhaps the slave himself would be sent into a distant state, never again to see the home which had become dear to him by countless ties, but, whatever the cause, the negro songs remain matchless in their melancholy sweetness, marvellous in their patient resignation to fate and ''massa's" will.
 But there were gleams of light and happiness in the life of the slave. In the evening, when the work was over, the darliies would assemble in the quarters" and, while the 'posSum and the hoe cake, the sweet potatoes and the corn were being cooked to perfec- tion by the skillful ''aunties, the fiddle and the banjo sounded merrily and the uproariors chorus mingled with the shuttle of the dancing feet
 From these festive occasions sprang the idea of negro minstrelsy, which has since become 60 distorted that not one person in fifty north of Mason and Dix on's line has any idea of real plantation music or Of the real depth and richness of those unique and matchleSs melodies. Since the war the negro has been free, but he has not forgotten his music, and he, and his descendants, even those in whose veins fingers hardly a drop of negro blood, still sing the songs that once delighted young massa'' and rose sadly around ''old massa's'' grave. But even among the negroes there was . great variety of music, tinged by local lty, of course, and often by the ances- tral tribe of the negro. Thus, in New Orleans the blacks had list of songs much different from the music of Vir- gina or the Carolinas. The songs of Carolina dwelt upon cotton lands and rice fields; those of Louisiana less upon material surroundings and lnore upon sentiment and love,
 Much French blood ran in the veins of these people aEl their music showed the combination of races. Even DOW. in Louisiana, the creole womcn-woIaen of waoEl a soUeheracr oace sald that they were the most beautiful in the world the quadcooas and oetoccons, chant their Song3 and lall3bias in both French and English. and the hollow accent of the negro tongue yet cliags to every melody, in either langpagc.
 The south may change as the years pass by; the negro may be blended with the white, and lost from view in the millions who will yet people that lovely southern land. but the songs of slavery, the wcndrouS exprcSSions of o m fl.a lsz-,