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Classic study of black slave music in America.

Table of Contents

Preface to the 2003 Paperback   xiii
Preface to the 1977 Edition   xvii
Prologue: The African Heritage and the Middle Passage   3
Part One: Development of Black Folk Music to 1800   19
1. Early Reports of African Music in British and French America   21 La Calinda and the Banza   30
Other African Dancing   38 2. More Black Instruments and Early White Reaction   47 Drums and Other African Instruments   47
The Balafo   55
Legal Restrictions on Instruments   58 3. The Role of Music in Daily Life   63 Funerals   63
Pinkster and Other African Celebrations in the North   66
Worksongs and Other Kinds of African Singing   68 4. The Acculturation of African Music in the New World   77 The Arrival of Africans and Their Music   78
Acculaturation in New Orleans   90 5. Conversion to Christianity   100
6. Acculturated Black Musicians in the Thirteen Colonies   112 The African Jig, a Black-to-White Exchange   120 Part Two: Secular and Sacred Black Folk Music, 1800-1867   125
7. African Survivals   127 Persisting Musical and Cultural Patterns   128
Black Music in New Orleans, 1820-67   132 8. Acculturated Dancing and Associated Instruments   139 Patting Juba   141
Drums, Quills, Banjo, Bones, Triangle, Tambourine   144
Fiddlers   147
Instrumental Combinations   155 9. Worksongs   161 Field Work and Domestic Chores   161
Industrial and Steamboat Workers   164
Boat Songs   166
Corn, Cane, and Other Harvest Songs   172
Singing on the March   176
Street Cries and Field Hollers   181 10. Distinctive Characteristics of Secular Black Folk Music   184 Whistling   184
Improvisation   184
Satire   187
Style of Singing   188
Other Secular Music   189 11. The Religious Background of Sacred Black Folk Music, 1801-67   191 Opposition to Religious Instruction of Slaves   192
Camp Meetings   197
Missions to the Slaves   199
Black Religious Groups   202
Opposition to Secular Music and Dancing   207 12. Distinctive Black Religious Music   217 Spirituals   217
Attempts to Suppress Black Religious Singing   229
The Shout   232
Funerals   234 Part Three: The Emergence of Black Folk Music during the Civil War   239
13. Early Wartime Reports and the First Publication of a Spiritual with Its Music   241 14. The Port Royal Experiment   252 Historical Background   252
Earliest Published Reports   256
Wartime Publication of Song Texts and Music   260 15. Reports of Black Folk Music, 1863-67   274 Criticism of "This Barbaric Music"   274
Recognition of a Distinctive Folk Music   275
The Shout   278
Worksongs   287
Performance Style   290
Introduction of "New" Songs by the Teachers   296 16. Slave Songs of the United States: Its Editors   303 William Francis Allen   304
Charles Pickard Ware   310
Lucy McKim Garrison   314 17. Slave Songs of the United States: Its Publication   321 The Contributors   321
Problems of Notation   326
Assembling the Collection   329
Publication and Reception   331
Conclusion   343
Appendices 349 I. Musical Excerpts from the Manuscript Diaries of William Francis Allen   349
II. Table of Sources for the Banjo, Chronologically Arranged   359
III. Earliest Published Versions of "Go Down, Moses"   363
Bibliography   374
Index   416

About the Author

Dena J. Epstein (1916-2013) was a retired assistant music librarian at the Joseph Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, and a past president of the Music Library Association.

Reviews

Winner of the Simkins Prize of the Southern Historical Association, 1979.

"No previous scholar has told more about the manner of diffusion of African music and dance in the New World . . . . No one else has related with more telling effect the impact that Afro-American musical patterns had upon the sensibilities of the white public."--Lawrence W. Levine, Journal of American History

"Epstein has uncovered far more about early black music than anyone thought possible. Her luxuriant quotations and definitive treatments of a wide variety of musical subtopics make the book an essential reference volume and a marvelous storehouse of information."--John B. Boles, Journal of Southern History

"Sinful Tunes ensures that we will never again be able to sing or listen to a spiritual in quite the same way. We can now see more clearly than ever before what has shaped it; we have been taken nearer the soul of the music."--Hugh Brogan, Times Literary Supplement

"[A] definitive, indeed monumental study of black slave music in America."--Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr., Musical Quarterly