Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes

The study collects and analyzes religious folk-songs performed by Black communities in the American South, presenting representative examples and dividing them into spirituals and secular pieces, the latter including social songs and work shanties. It describes musical characteristics such as flexible forms, improvisation, mixed melodic types, minor cadences, and refrains, and examines lyrical features—colloquial diction, condensed projective imagery, humor, and an underlying melancholia—often drawing on biblical figures and narratives. The author treats these songs as authentic expressions of communal feeling and thought and argues for their preservation as evidence of social, moral, and religious tendencies amid changing conditions.