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Slave Songs of the United States, title page Michael Row the Boat Ashore Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen. Slave Songs of the United States was a collection of African American music consisting of 136 songs. Published in 1867, it was the first, and most influential, [1] [2] collection of spirituals to be published.
The basic narrative remains intact. On the surface, the song is a black slave's lament over his white master's death in a horse-riding accident. The song, however, is also interpreted as having a subtext of celebration about that death and of the slave having contributed to it through deliberate negligence or even deniable action. [3] [4] [5] [6]
Responding to the rise of slave patrols in the slave-owning southern United States, the song is about an unnamed black man who attempts to run from a slave patrol and avoid capture. The song was released as a commercial recording several times, beginning in the 1920s, and it was included in the 2013 film 12 Years a Slave.
The Jubilee Singers then popularized the songs during a tour of the United States and Europe. "Steal Away" is a standard Gospel song , and is found in the hymnals of many Protestant denominations. An arrangement of the song is included in the oratorio A Child of Our Time , first performed in 1944, by the classical composer Michael Tippett (1908 ...
The use of songs as a narrative and a tool to convey an important message continued into the 20th century with Black Americans using their voices to help their fight for freedom and equality.
Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave and abolitionist author. In his 19th-century autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), Douglass gives examples of how the songs sung by slaves had multiple meanings. His examples are sometimes quoted to support the claim of coded slave songs.
African-American music is a broad term covering a diverse range of musical genres largely developed by African Americans and their culture.Its origins are in musical forms that developed as a result of the enslavement of African Americans prior to the American Civil War.
This is a list of songs that either originated in blackface minstrelsy or are otherwise closely associated with that tradition. Songwriters and publication dates are given where known. Songwriters and publication dates are given where known.