In a recent article (The Living Age, October, 1924), Darius
Milhaud sums up these characteristic traits as "the possibilities
of a thoroughgoing novelty of instrumental technique.” Thus
Negro music very probably has a great contribution yet to make
to the substance and style of contemporary music, both choral
and instrumental. If so, its thematic and melodic contributions
from Dvorák to Goldmark's recent Negro Rhapsody and
the borrowings of rhythmical suggestions by Milhaud and
Stravinsky are only preluding experiments that have proclaimed the value of the Negro musical idioms, but have not
fully developed them. When a body of folk music is really
taken up into musical tradition, it is apt to do more than contribute a few new themes. For when the rhythmic and harmonic basis of music is affected, it is more than a question of
superstructure, the very foundations of the art are in process
of being influenced.
In view of this very imminent possibility, it is in the interest of musical development itself that we insist upon a broader conception and a more serious appreciation of Negro folk song, and of the Spiritual which is the very kernel of this distinctive folk art.
We cannot accept the attitude that would merely preserve this music, but must cultivate that which would also develop it. Equally with treasuring and appreciating it as music of the past, we must nurture and welcome its contribution to the music of to-morrow. Mr. Work has aptly put it in saying: "While it is now assured that we shall always preserve these songs in their original forms, they can never be the last word in the development of our music. . . . They are the starting point, not our goal; the source, not the issue, of our musical tradition.”
