This stirring collection of Negro spirituals, edited by the great Negro poet James Weldon Johnson and arranged for voice and piano by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson, presents 120 of these melodic—and intensely moving—religious folk songs for contemporary performance. The original language has been faithfully preserved in this convenient performing edition, so that the spirituals can be sung today exactly as they were more than a hundred years ago. Included in this special, two-volumes-in-one publication are such perennial favorites as Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Deep River, Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho, and Go Down Moses—songs handed down from generation to generation in a rich oral tradition, and painstakingly assembled and edited for the enjoyment of future generations. The songs are prefaced by James Weldon Johnson’s masterful discussions of their origins, musical quality, and historical significance. Above all, he stresses the essential dignity of the Negro spirituals, which, though no doubt inspired by the religious faith of their masters, “are purely and solely the creation of the American Negro.”
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding transcriptions of traditional music,
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This review is from: The Books Of American Negro Spirituals (Da Capo Paperback) (Paperback)
This book stays true to aural tradition and offers outstanding, non-Westernized arrangements of the aural traditional music of African American spirituals.The choice of using phonetic spellings for the lyrics means that the lyrics are heavy in the use of words like "dese", "dose", "Heab'n", etc. However, given the original publication being in the 1920's, and the author's comments in the introduction, it is apparent that the spellings are not the result of gross cultural insensitivity. The respect for, and love of this fine music comes through in the author's comments. And the transcriptions retain the strong harmonic features that are often "arranged out" of collections of aural traditional music. It is a fine collection, and an absolute steal at the price.
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