230 PART 2 | FROM THE CIVIL WAR THROUGH WORLD WAR I
abolition of slavery. Rooted in a past era of persecution, the words continued to
have relevance for a people who in many ways were still treated as second-class
citizens. The concert spiritual arrangements of Burleigh and others reinforced
the image of the New Negro: cultivated, intelligent, articulate, and refi ned—the
opposite of the minstrel-show stereotypes.
But another type of African American music was also entering the mainstream
of popular culture at the turn of the century, one not so easily divorced from min-
strelsy. That music, ragtime, is a central part of the story told in the next chapter.QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND REVIEW
- What specific features distinguish American Indian music from the types of
music discussed in earlier chapters? Consider both the sound of the music
and its uses. What are some similarities between American Indian and other
kinds of music? - Explain why collectors using nineteenth-century European criteria for
evaluating folk songs might either ignore American folk songs or consider
them unworthy of study. - How were the efforts of the first collectors of black spirituals similar to those
of the early collectors of American Indian music, and how were they differ-
ent? How do these similarities and differences reflect the relative status in
those years of the American Indian, African American, and Anglo-American
populations?
FURTHER READING
Floyd, Samuel A. The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the
United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Foner, Philip S. American Labor Songs of the Nineteenth Century. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1975.
Kodish, Debora G. Good Friends and Bad Enemies: Robert Winslow Gordon and the Study of
American Folksong. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.
Levine, Victoria Lindsay. “American Indian Musics, Past and Present.” In The Cambridge
History of American Music, edited by David Nicholls, 3–29. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998.
Logsdon, Guy, ed. “The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing” and Other Songs Cowboys Sing. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1989.
Shirley, Wayne D. “The Coming of ‘Deep River.’ ” American Music 15, no. 4 (winter 1997): 493–534.
Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans. 3d ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.FURTHER LISTENING AND VIEWING
Healing Songs of the American Indians. Folkways FE 4251, 1965. Antholog y of cylinder record-
ings by Frances Densmore.
Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1891–1922. Archeophone, 2005.
Songcatcher. Directed by Maggie Greenwald. Trimark Pictures, 2000. A fi ctional story
based on the work of Olive Dame Campbell and other early folk song collectors.172028_09_205-230_r3_ko.indd 230 23/01/13 11:29 AM