The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1894-02-20
NEGROES AND NEGRO MELODIES.
MI G. Winfield Pearce Says No Afro-Amer
lean Song Has Yet Been Discovered

Mr.. G. MILFORD Pearce, president Of
the Southern Journal Syndicate, and
who resided in Portland twenty years
ago and was pupil of Mr.. George Mars
ton, the well-known Portland composer,
publishes in the New York Sun of Thurs
day the following interesting article
which cost him more than $500 in
travelling expenses to verify:
The eminent Bohemian composer,
Prof. Dvorak, has been led to believe
that the SO called negro melodies of the
South, made familiar in Europe and
America by the singing of students of
schools and colleges for colored men
and women, were taken 'own from the
folk songs of the slaves. | have lived
and travelled in all tae Southern States,
and have large acquaintance with
musical people of the South, and one and
all have told me that there is no jubilee
or negro minstrel song known in that
part of our country that was not written
by Northern or European white men.
I have talked with scores of colored
singers at Fisk and Clark universities,
and with colored ministers from Virginia
to the end of Texas about the folk lore
and songs of the Afro-A mericans, and all
bore testimony to the fact well known
in the South, that the colored people do
not tell stories about "Brer' Rabbit"
or any other fairy tales, and that they
have no songs or tunes that cannot be
traced back to sons well-known Europ-
can song or musical composition which
they heard from the white people. All
the jubilee songs, music, and words
were written by keen-witted New Eng
land teachers of music in the schools for
colored people, who despise the silly
gibberisn of the "GoIden Slippers" or
''Ring de Bells" standard.
The truth is that the colored people
love and appreciate really good music by
the masters, and their taste for poetry
runs to Shakespeare. Milton, Byron.
and othes OF the modern English school.
I have attended more than thousand
colored churches when escorting Nothern
friends to see the sights of the South,
and never heard a jubilee song at the
services; they use the same hymnals that
are in use by the churches for white
congregations, and pride themselves upon
decorous services
When Beethoven was writing the
Moonlight Sonata" Called the Kreuter
Sonata in Count Tolstols novel; for
colored piano player from New Orleans
who was making a tour OF Germany, he
asked the American for a motif that
was purely Afro-Anlerican; but the only
tune that the American knew to be of
New Orleans creation was simple air
sung by the creoles. Any one who
knows the old airs of Provence will find
one in the motif of the first part of the
moonlight Sontata," and it is the one
air which the cOlored pianist told
Beethoven was a native meriean air from
his native place. In the tide water
counties of Virginia men and women
hum Malcbrook has gone to the Army. :"
"Who Shall be king but Charlie,
"Lulli bulliro,." and other songs sung
singers know nothing of the history
connected with the songs and many of
the ignorant natives tell strangers that
those songs are negro and voudoo airs.
Many of the best SO. called plantation
melodies were wltten by white ladies and
gentlemen for the amusement of their
children, and know prominent clergy
man of Georgia who has written some
of the best break-downs and clog dances
used on the minstrel stage but he wrote
them for his boys VINO were at college,
and of course, would not stand in a
paternal way for the jingling melodies
A so-calld negro melody, that has been
suug for years wherever the English
language is spoken, was written by an
eminent surgeon from Dublin, who has
been long time practising in city of
New Jersey, and it is the motif of his
song that has been used with telling
effect by Prof. Dvorak in a recent
symphony; yet this Irish physician never
saw the" cane and cotton fields" he writes
and sings about in the song.
Dixie" "a beloved@@by all Southerners
black or white, was written by Albert
Pike of Boston, Mass, and the music is
bv an Irish "A merican named Scanned,
New Yorker, who used to write melodies
for Dan Bryant.
have been for several years cores
pondent for an English journal which
devotes considerable space to musical
mat tiers, and when the English craze set
in about 1889, for American banjo and
negro melodies, was sent to find snp-
ply of good and original songs written
by American negroes. | made tour of
the South, called at every music store,
talked with musical people and teachers,
and until | reached New Orleans | did
not find one song or tune written by
colored person. There | found a dealer
in lnusic who said he had a collection of
music written by Mexican composers
from airs sung by poems, who. he assured
me, were halt Mexican and half negro
| bought few of the compost tions, and
played one or two in the evening in the