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Lecture Video Segment 5: The Black Writer's Perspective
Descriptions of black singing, particularly black women's singing, have been especially important to black writers. Frederick Douglass's classic description exemplifies this understanding of black singing and its relationship to the social and political condition of black people's lives: They would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as they went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that came up, came out — if not in the word, in sound.... They would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone.... They would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves.... Every tone was a testimony against slavery and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains...to those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. Black singing helped black people gather the strength to fight when they had no weapons; it invited and prepared the way for visitations from ancestors and the Holy Ghost.... It laid the foundation for diverse artistic visions. It expressed their longing for safety, for shelter, for love, for divine retribution, and for freedom. | |