The Breckenridge news. (Cloverport, Ky.) 1876-1955, 1894-03-28
NEGRO MELODIES.
The Songs Sung in the South Are
Composed by Northern
White People.
The Banjo Is Not the Negroes Fav-
orlte Instrument, but He Loves
the Guitar.
No NATIVE SONGS.

The eminent Bohemian compose
Pro. Dvorak, has been led to believe tha
the so-called negro melodies of the Soutl
made familiar in Europe and Americ
by the singing of students of schools an
colleges for colored men and womer
we're taken down from the folk songs G
the slaves. l have lived and travele,
in all the Southern States, and have
large acquaintance with musical peopl
OF the South, and one and all have toll,
me that there is not jubilee or negr,
minstrel song known in that part of on
country that was not written by North
ern or European white men.
| | have talked with scores OF coloreC
singers at Fisk and Clark universities
and with colored ministers from Virgins
to the end of Texas about the folk Lore
and songs of the Afro-American, and all
bore testimony to the fact, well known
in the South, that the colored people dc
mt tell stories about "Brer' Rabbit OF
any other fairy tales, and that they have
no songs or tunes that cannot be traced
back to some well-known European song
or musical composition which they
heard from the white people. All the
jubilee songs, music and words, were
written by keen-witted New England
teachers OF music in schools for colored
people who dispise the silly gibberish of
the Golden Slippers" or "Ring dem
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
Others of the modern English school.
have attended more than O thousand col
ored churches when escorting Northern
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 Kreutzer Sonata
in Codnt Tolstoi's novel; for a colored
piano player from New Orleans who was
making tour of Germany, he asked the
American for a motif that was purely
Afro-American 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 Moonlight Sonata
and it is the one air which the colored
pianist told Beethoven was native
air from his native place.
In the tide-water counties of Virginia
men and women hum "Malbrook Has
Gone to the Army" "Who Shall Be
King But Charley" "Lullibulliro," and
other songs sung by the early colonists
out most ofthe singers know nothing OF
he history connected with the songs,
md many of the ignorant natives tell
strangers those songs are negro voudoo |
lirs. Many of the best so-called planta-
ion melodies were written by white |
aides and gentlemen for the amusement |
If their children, and know a promi-
lent clergymen of Georgia who has writ |
en- some of the best breakdown and |
log dances used on the minstrel stage,
,ut he wrote them for his boys who |
we're at college, and, OF course, would not |
tand in a paternal way for the jingling |
melodies. A so-called negro melody,
hat has been sung for years wherever
he English language is spoken, was writ
en- by an eminent surgeon from Dublin,
Who has for long time practiced in a
ity of New Jersey, and it is the motif of
lis song that has been used by Prof
)vorak in a recent symphony; yet this
ica Irish physician never saw the cane
nd cotton fields, he writes and sings
bout in the song.
"Dixie," beloved by all Southerners,
lack and white, was written by Albert
like, of Boston, Mass, and the music is
" an Irish-American named Scanned, a
Few Yorker, who use to write melodies
or Dan Bryant.