The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-08-17
From the New York Sun.

From the New York Sun.
 A@ E FEEL moved to say another WY word about a recent article in
 W this newspaper discussing the late Iafcadio Hearn and, incidentally, making reference to the Congo folk music of which he was fin eager search for many years In the course of the article 1t was asserted that Hearn, after all his researches in New Orleans, Martinique and various West Indian districts. reached the conclusion that the so-called Congo songs' were not of African origin at all. He had been fascinated by the quaint lullabies and crooning cradle chants, as indeed had every one who heard them; and he conceived the idea that they were simply refined and chastened evolutions of the ancient, barbaric music of the Congo. But after long investigation, en- frightened as he was by profound and va red information and previous discovery he found that nine-tenths of the supposed African melodies were simply rude adap- tations of the Spanish and French songs which the slaves had heard in Santo Domingo.
 Fifteen or twenty years ago George w. Cable, at that time one of the most de- l'ghtful and graceful historians of Louis iana Creole life, published in the Century Magazine two or three articles on the all legged Congo songs. He gave both the words and the musical score. The result was extremely interesting and attractive MT. Cable, however was not musician He knew nothing of the works of Lulli Rameau, Boieldieu, Adam, F1otow, and he jumped to the mistaken conclusion that the songs exploited for his hearing were the real bequests of darkest Africa to the waiting Christian world. As a matter of fact, nearly every one of his scores was a vulgarized and dilated expression of well-known French and Spanish compo- sitons.
 The case of Gottschalk was very dif- ferent. He was a musician, and more; not only a maestro at the piano, but genius with initiative and divination He spent years in New Orleans. No doubt he at tended the Voudoo festivals and celebra- tions on "St. Johns Eve" and heard the wild overtures and antiphonies of the frantic celebrants assembled on the shores Ol 0cttdlilly iiAo hAoSt ot- tractive compositions in that line. the "Bamboula' and the "Sallinda,' would seem to indicate that he had caught the inspiration. But Louisiana musicians. speaking in all reverence for Gottschalk contend that his compositions, magnifi- cent though they be, reproduce merely the Spanish and French melodies of a century or more ago, filtered through the dull, bewildered medium of the Congo consciousness. Competent authorities in New Orleans long ago declared that the very nature of the scale and measure of this music proved Its European origin.
 At all events, Lafcadio Hearn accept ed this conclusion, for after several years in Cincinnati and New Orleans devoted to research and inquiry he went to va rious West Indian islands in pursuit of the knowledge he had failed to accumu- late in the United States. Moreover, the fact that he never issued any declaration in the connection would seem to prove that he had found no genuine Congo music worth the mention. This is the the ory of the modern cognoscenti in Louis- iana, who recognize in all the so-called negro chants and lulIabies the under throb which marks the old Spanish and provencal compositions, such as La Cor londrira," "A la Media Noche.' and so on. There can be no reasonable doubt that Hearn left New Orleans and subsequently the West Indies. in despair of satisfying the interest which for so long had monop- olized his intellectual solicitudes.
 Unquestionably, Hearn was genius. But he couldn't make silk purse out of