istic of the ‘spirituals’ is melody. The melodies
of ‘Steal Away to Jesus,’ ‘Swing Low, Sweet
Chariot,’ ‘Nobody Knows de Trouble I See,’ ‘I
couldn’t hear Nobody Pray,’ ‘Deep River,’ ‘O,
Freedom Over Me,’ and many others of these
songs possess a beauty that is—what shall I say?
Poignant. In the riotous rhythms of Ragtime
the Negro expressed his irrepressible buoyancy,
his keen response to the sheer joy of living; in the
‘spirituals’ he voiced his sense of beauty and his
deep religious feeling.”[1]
H. E. Krehbiel says: “There was sunshine as well as gloom in the life of the black slaves in the Southern colonies and States, and so we have songs which are gay as well as grave; but as a rule the finest songs are the fruits of suffering undergone and the hope of the deliverance from bondage which was to come with translation to heaven after death. The oldest of them are the most beautiful, and many of the most striking have never yet been collected, partly because they contained elements, melodic as well as rhythmical, which baffled the ingenuity of the early collectors. Unfortunately, trained musicians have never entered upon the field, and it is to be feared that it is now too late. The peculiarities which the col-
- ↑ James Weldon Johnson, Book of American Negro Poetry, New York, 1922.
