forced themselves upon popular attention. In the
thirties, they emerged and in tunes like “Near the
lake where droop the willow” and passed into
current song or were caricatured by the minstrels.
Then came Stephen Foster who accompanied a
mulatto maid often to the Negro church and heard
the black folk sing; he struck a new note in songs
like “Old Kentucky Home,” “Old Folks at Home”
and “Nellie was a Lady.” But it was left to war
and emancipation to discover the real primitive
beauty of this music to the world.
When northern men and women who knew music, met the slaves at Port Royal after its capture by Federal troops, they set down these songs in their original form for the first time so that the world might hear and sing them. The sea islands of the Carolinas where these meetings took place “with no third witness” were filled with primitive black folk, uncouth in appearance, and queer in language, but their singing was marvellous. Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Miss McKim and others collected these songs in 1867, making the first serious study of Negro American music. The preface said:
“The musical capacity of the Negro race has been recognized for so many years that it is hard to explain why no systematic effort has hitherto been made to collect and preserve their melodies.
