Selection of essays by Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson was a philosopher artist. Here we republish four of his writings, 'An Artist Must Take Sides', 'Primitives', 'I Want to be African' and 'Songs of My People' to make available the breadth and depth of his thinking.

The Artist Must Take Sides 

Speech at rally sponsored by National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief in aid of the Spanish Refugee Children, Royal Albert Hall, London, June 24, 1937-Daily Worker, November 4, 1937 

Friends. I am deeply happy to join with you in this appeal for the greatest cause which faces the world today. Like every true artist, I have longed to see my talent contributing in an unmistakably clear manner to the cause of humanity. I feel that tonight I am doing so. Every artist, every scientist, must decide NOW where he stands. He has no alternative. There is no standing above the conflict on Olympian heights. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction-in certain countries of the greatest of man's literary heritages, through the propagation of false ideas of racial and national superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. The 
battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. 

The challenge must be taken up. Time does not wait. The course of history can be changed, but not halted. Fascism fights to destroy the culture which society has created; created through pain and suffering, through desperate toil, but with unconquerable will and lofty vision. Progressive and democratic mankind fight not alone to save this prevent a war of unimaginable atrocity from engulfing the world. cultural heritage accumulated through the ages, but also fight today to  prevent a war of unimaginable atrocity from engulfing the world. 

What matters a man’s vocation or profession? Fascism is no respecter of persons. It makes no distinction between combatants and noncombatants. The blood-soaked streets of Guernica, that beautiful peaceful village nested in the Basque hills, are proof of that as are the concentration camps full of scientists and artists which in some western lands dot the countryside, bringing back the dark ages. 

The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative. The history of the capitalist era is characterized by the degradation of my people: despoiled of their lands, their culture destroyed, they are in every country, save one, denied equal protection of the law, and deprived of their rightful place in the respect of their fellows. 

Not through blind faith or coercion, but conscious of my course, I take my place with you. I stand with you in unalterable support of the Government of Spain, duly and regularly chosen by its lawful sons and daughters. 

Again I say, the true artist cannot hold himself aloof. The legacy of culture from our predecessors is in danger. It is the foundation upon which we build a still more lofty edifice. It belongs not only to us, not only to the present generation–it belongs to posterity--and must be defended to the death. May you rally every artist, every scientist, every writer in England who loves democracy. May you rally to the side of Republican Spain every black man in the British Empire. 
May your inspiring message reach every man, woman, and child who stands for freedom and justice. For the liberation of Spain from the oppression of fascist reactionaries is not a private matter of the Spaniards, but the common cause of all advanced and progressive humanity.

---

"Primitives" 
The New Statesman and Nation, August 8, 1936, pp. 190–92 

When discriminating racially, popular opinion lays emphasis on the Negro's colour. Science, however, goes deeper than that and bases its arguments on the workings of the Negro mind.
 
Man, say certain of the scientists, is divided into two varieties—the variety which thinks in concrete symbols, and the variety which thinks in abstract concepts. The Negro belongs to the former and Western man to the latter. 

Now the man who thinks in concrete symbols has no abstract conception of such words as "good," "brave," "clever." They are represented in his mind by symbolic pictures. For instance, "good" in a concrete mind is often represented as a picture of a woman with a child. The drawing of this picture would be the way of conveying an idea of goodness to a person of the same mentality. Such pictures become conventionalised into a kind of written language. Now to the Western mind this may seem a clumsy way of going about things, but it is a method which has given the world some of the most delicate and richest art, and some of the profoundest and most subtle philosophy that man has ever known. 

For it is not only the African Negro, and so-called primitive people, who think in concrete symbols–all the great civilisations of the East (with possibly the exception of India) have been built up by people with this type of mind. It is a mentality that has given us giants like Confucius, Mencius, and Lao-tze. More than likely it was the kind of thinking that gave us the understanding and wisdom of a person like Jesus Christ.
 
It has given us the wonders of Central American architecture and Chinese art. 

It has, in fact, given us the full flower of all the highest possibilities in man–with the single exception of applied science. That was left to a section of Western man to achieve and on that he bases his assertion of superiority. 

Now I am not going to try to belittle the achievements of science. Only a fool would deny that the man who holds the secrets of those holds the key position in the world. I am simply going to ask–having found the key, has Western man–Western bourgeois man (the reason for the distinction is made clear later)--sufficient strength left to turn it in the lock? Or is he going to find that in the search he has so exhausted his vitality that he will have to call in the cooperation of his more virile "inferiors"--Eastern or Western–before he can open the door and enter into his heritage? 

For the cost of developing the kind of mind by which the discoveries of science were made has been one which now threatens the discoverer's very life. 

The reason for this lies in the fact that Western man only seems to have gained more and more power of abstraction at the expense of his creative faculties. There is not much doubt that the artistic achievements of Europe, as abstract intellectualism penetrated deeper and deeper into the people, have steadily declined. It is true that this decline is partly obscured by an output of self-conscious, uninspired productions, which have a certain artificial grace; but discriminating people have little difficulty in distinguishing these lifeless imitations from the living pulsing thing. 

It may be argued that preference for live art over dead imitation may be simply a question of taste and is of no fundamental importance. Neither would it be if the change was something confined to that small minority usually described as artists, but unfortunately what shows amongst these is only a symptom of a sickness that to some extent is affecting almost every stratum of the Western world.
 
To understand this you need to remember that by "creative ability” one means something more than the capacity of a few individuals to paint, to write, or to make music. That is simply the supreme development of a quality that exists in the make-up of every human being. The whole problem of living can never be understood until the world recognises that artists are not a race apart. Every man has some element of the artist in him, and if this is pulled up by the roots he 
becomes suicidal and dies. 

In the East this quality has never been damaged—to that is traceable the virility of most Eastern peoples. In the West it remains healthy and active only amongst those sections of the community which have never fully subscribed the Western values—that is, the exploited sections, plus some rebels from the bourgeoisie. For the rest, mathematical thinking has made them so intellectualised, so detached and self-conscious that it has tended to kill this creative emotional side. The result is that as Western civilisation advances its members find themselves in the paradoxical position of being more and more in control of their environment, yet more and more at the mercy of it. The man who accepts Western values absolutely, finds his creative faculties becoming so warped and stunted that he is almost completely dependent on external satisfactions; and the moment he becomes frustrated in his search for these, he begins to develop neurotic symptoms, to feel that life is not worth living, and, in chronic cases, to 
take his own life. 

This is a severe price to pay even for such achievements as those of Western science. That the price has not been complete, and its originators have so far survived, is due to the stubborn persistence, in spite of discouragement, of the creative side. Though European thought, in its blind worship of the intellect, has tried to reduce life to a mechanical formula, it has never quite succeeded. Its entire peasantry, large masses of its proletariat, and even a certain percentage of its middle class have never been really touched. These sections have thrown up a series of rebels who have felt rather than analysed the danger and cried out loudly against it. 

Many of these have probably been obscure people who have never been heard of outside their immediate circle, but others have been sufficiently articulate to rise above the shoulders of their fellows and voice their protest in forms that have commanded world-wide attention. Of such persons one can mention Blake and D. H. Lawrence. In fact one could say that all the live art which Europe has produced since the Renaissance has been in spite of, and not because of, the new trends of Western thought. 

I do not stand alone in this criticism of the Western intellect. Famous critics support me. Walter Raleigh, when discussing Blake, writes: 

“The gifts with which he is so plentifully dowered for all they are looked at askance as abnormal and portentous, are the common stuff of human nature, without which life would flag and cease. No man destitute of genius could live for a day. Genius is spontaneity-the life of the soul asserting itself triumphantly in the midst of dead things.”

In the face of all this can anyone echo the once-common cry that the way of progress is the way of the intellectual? If we all took this turning should we not be freeing ourselves from our earthy origins by the too-simple expedient of pulling ourselves up by the roots? 

But because one does not want to follow Western thought into this dilemma, one none the less recognises the value of its achievements. One would not have the world discount them and retrogress in terror to a primitive state. It is simply that one recoils from the Western intellectual's idea that, having got himself on to this peak overhanging an abyss, he should want to drag all other people--on pain of being dubbed inferior if they refuse--up after him into the same precarious position. 

That, in a sentence, is my case against Western values. 

It is not a matter of whether the Negro and other so-called "primitive" people are incapable of becoming pure intellectuals (actually, in America, many have), it is a matter of whether they are going to be unwise enough to be led down this dangerous by-way when, without sacrificing the sound base in which they have their roots, they can avail themselves of the now-materialised triumphs of science and proceed to use them while retaining the vital creative side. 

One does not go so far as to say that the West will not share in this new progress. Perhaps, even yet, it will find a way to turn the key. Perhaps the recognised fact that over-intellectualism tends towards impotence and sterility will result in the natural extinction of that flower of the West that has given us our scientific achievements, and the rise of the more virile, better-balanced European, till now derided and submerged. Some people think that in the European proletariat this new Western man is already coming to birth. 

It is some such solution as this which I imagine will solve the problem of the further progress of the world. 

We, however, who are not Europeans, may be forgiven for hoping that the new age will be one in which the teeming "inferiors" of the East will be permitted to share. 

Naturally one does not claim that the Negro must come to the front more than another. One does, however, realise that in the Negro one has a virile people of many millions, overwhelmingly outnumbering the other inhabitants of a rich and undeveloped continent. 

That, when he is given a chance, he is capable of holding his own with the best Western Europe can produce is proved by the quality of his folk music both in Africa and the Americas–also by the works of Pushkin, the Russo-African poet; or by the performances of Ira Aldrich—the actor who enslaved artistic Europe in the last century. Even a writer like Dumas, though not in the first rank, is a person who could hardly have been fathered by a member of an inferior race.

To-day there are in existence more Negroes of the first rank than the world cares to recognise. 

In reply, it will of course be argued that these are isolated instances—that the Negroes as a whole have never achieved anything. "It may be true," people will say, "that the African thinks as Confucius thought, or as the Aztecs thought; that his language is constructed in the same way as that language which gave us the wonder of Chinese poetry; that he works along the same lines as the Chinese artist; but where are his philosophers, his poets, his artists?" 

Even if this were unanswerable, it would not prove that—since he has the right equipment–-the African's golden age might not lie ahead. It is not unanswerable, however. Africa has produced far more than Western people realise. More than one scientist has been struck by the similarity between certain works by long-dead West African artists and exquisite examples of Chinese, Mexican and Javanese art. 

Leading European sculptors have found inspiration in the work of the West African.

It is now recognised that African music has subtleties of rhythm far finer than anything achieved by a Western composer. In fact the more complicated Negro rhythm cannot be rendered on Western instruments at all. 

Such achievements can hardly be the work of a fundamentally inferior people. When the African realises this and builds on his own traditions, borrowing mainly the Westerner's technology (a technology—he should note—that is being shown not to function except in a socialist framework) he may develop into a people regarding whom the adjective "inferior" would be ludicrous rather than appropriate.

I Want to Be African 

I am a Negro. The origin of the Negro is African. It would therefore seem an easy matter for me to assume African nationality. 

Instead it is an extremely complicated matter, fraught with the gravest importance to me and some millions of coloured folk. 

Africa is a Dark Continent not merely because its people are dark-skinned or by reason of its extreme impenetrability, but because its history is lost. We have an amazingly vivid reconstruction of the culture of ancient Egypt, but the roots of almost the whole remainder of Africa are buried in antiquity. 

They are, however, rediscoverable; and they will in time be rediscovered. 

I am confirmed in this faith by recent researches linking the culture of the Negro with that of many peoples of the East. 

Let us consider for a moment the problem of my people—the African Negroes in the Occident, and particularly in America. 

We are now fourteen millions strong-though perhaps "strong" is not the apt word; for nearly two and a half centuries we were in chains, and although to-day we are technically free and officially labelled "American Citizen," we are at a great economic disadvantage, most trades and many professions being practically barred to us and social barriers inexorably raised. 

Consequently the American Negro in general suffers from an acute inferiority complex; it has been drummed into him that the white man is the Salt of the Earth and the Lord of Creation, and as a perfectly natural result his ambition is to become as nearly like a white man as possible. 

He is that tragic creature, a man without a nationality. He claims to be American, to be British, to be French-but you cannot assume a nationality as you would a new suit of clothes. 

In the country of his adoption, or the country that ruthlessly adopted his forebears, he is an alien; but (herein lies his tragedy) he believes himself to have broken away from his true origins; he has, he argues, nothing whatever in common with the inhabitant of Africa to-day–and that is where I believe he is wrong. 

It may be asked "Why disturb him if he is happy in his present state?" 

There are two sufficient answers to that; one that he is not happy, except in so far as his natural gaiety of disposition overcomes his circumstances–and the fact that a sick man laughs is surely no reason for not attempting to cure his sickness; and the other is that there is a world-necessity above and beyond his immediate needs. 
 
This world-necessity is for an understanding between the nations and peoples which will lead ultimately to the "family of nations" ideal.

To this world-community every nation will contribute whatever it has of culture; and unless the African Negro (including his far-flung collaterals) bestirs himself and comes to a realization of his potentialities and obligations there will be no culture for him to contribute. 

At present the younger generation of Negroes in America looks towards Africa and asks "What is there there to interest me? What of value has Africa to offer that the Western world cannot give me?" 

At first glance the question seems unanswerable. He sees only the savagery, devil-worship, witch-doctors, voo-doo, ignorance, squalor, and darkness taught in American schools.
 
Where these exist, he is looking at the broken remnants of what was in its day a mighty thing; something which perhaps has not been destroyed, but only driven underground, leaving ugly scars upon the earth's surface to mark the place of its ultimate reappearance. 

We know that in China there was a great and mighty culture—mighty in the sense not of pomp but of potency. An exiled Chinese to-day, at University in Manchester or Birmingham, might look towards China and ask the self-same question-"What has that chaos of conflicting misgovernments and household gods and superstitions to offer me?"-but we know enough of history to be aware that great cultures do not completely die, but are soil for future growths. 
That portion of China that is only Buddhist is negligible, the publicized part, the unscratched surface; below are the vast depths of spirituality of which Taoism in its present-day form is the broken relic. 

Somewhere, sometime-perhaps at the Renaissance, but I think much earlier-a great part of Religion went astray. A blind groping after Rationality resulted in an incalculable loss in pure Spirituality. Mankind placed a sudden dependence on that part of his mind that was brain, intellect, to the discountenance of that part that was sheer evolved instinct and intuition; we grasped at the shadow and lost the substance ... and now we are not even altogether clear what the substance was. 

Now the pendulum is swinging back. Preaching in London not long ago, Father Bede Frost is reported to have said: 

The epoch that began at the end of the sixteenth century is now ending. You can see the tiles fall from the roof, the walls beginning to crack… 
During that epoch men's minds have been influenced by three dogmas: 
The perfectability of man in himself, 
The inevitability of progress towards a golden age,
 The infallibility of physical science. 

Mankind is gradually feeling its way back to a more fundamental, more primitive, but perhaps truer religion; and religion, the orientation of man to God or forces greater than himself, must be the basis of This religion, this basic culture, has its roots in the Far East, and in Africa.

What links the American Negro to this culture? It would take a psycho-anthropologist to give it a name; but its nature is obvious to any earnest inquirer. 

Its manifestation occurs in his forms of religion and of art. It has recently been demonstrated beyond a possibility of doubt that the dances, the songs, and the worship perpetuated by the Negro in America are identical with those of his cousins hundreds of years removed in the depths of Africa, whom he has never seen, of whose very existence he is only dimly aware. 

His peculiar sense of rhythm alone would stamp him indelibly as African; and a slight variation of this same rhythm-consciousness is to be found among the Tartars and Chinese, to whom he is much more nearly akin than he is to the Arab, for example. 

Not long ago I learned to speak Russian, since, the Russians being so closely allied through the Tartars to the Chinese, I expected to find myself more in sympathy with that language than with English, French, or German. I was not disappointed; I found that there were Negro concepts which I could express much more readily in Russian than in other languages. 

I would rather sing Russian folk-songs than German grand opera- not because it is necessarily better music, but because it is more instinctive and less reasoned music. It is in my blood. 

The pressing need of the American Negro is an ability to set his own standards. At school, at university, at law school, it didn't matter to me whether white students passed me or I passed them. What mattered was, if I got 85 marks, why didn't I get 100? If I got 99, why didn't I get 100? "To thine own self be true" is a sentiment sneered at to-day as merely Victorian-but upon its observance may well depend the future of nations and peoples. 

It is of course useful and even necessary from an economic and social standpoint for the Negro to understand Western ideas and culture, for he will gain nothing by further isolating himself; and I would emphasize that his mere physical return to his place of origin is not the essential condition of his regeneration. In illustration of this take the parallel case of the Jews. 

They, like a vast proportion of Negroes, are a race without a nation; but, far from Palestine, they are indissolubly bound by their ancient religious practices–which they recognize as such. I emphasize this in contradistinction to the religious practices of the American Negro, which, from the snake-worship practised in the deep South to the Christianity of the revival meeting, are patently survivals of the earliest African religions; and he does not recognize them as such. 
Their acknowledgment of their common origin, species, interest, and attitudes binds Jew to Jew; a similar acknowledgment will bind Negro and Negro. 

I realize that this will never be accomplished by viewing from afar the dark rites of the witch-doctor–a phenomenon as far divorced from fundamental reality as are the petty bickerings over altar decorations and details of vestment from the intention of Christ. 

It may be accomplished, or at least furthered, by patient inquiry. To this end I am learning Swahili, Tivi, and other African dialects–which come easily to me because their rhythm is the same as that employed by the American Negro in speaking English; and when the time is ripe I propose to investigate, on the spot, the possibilities of such a regeneration as I have outlined. 

Meanwhile in my music, my plays, my films I want to carry always this central idea: to be African. 
Multitudes of men have died for less worthy ideals; it is even more eminently worth living for. 

Songs of My People 

Sovietskaia muzyka (Soviet Music), No. 7, July 1949, pp. 100–104 
Translated from the Russian by Paul A. Russo 

There is an old Spanish proverb that goes: sing me your folk songs and I'll tell you about the character, customs, and history of your people. 

How true! Folk songs are, in fact, a poetic expression of a people's innermost nature, of the distinctive and multifaceted conditions of its life and culture, of the sublime wisdom that reflects that people's great historical journey and experience. This is as true of the very rich treasury of songs of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, as it is of the wonderful songs of the Spanish, French, Czech, Italian, Polish, Chinese, Norwegian, Georgian, Armenian, and many other peoples of the world. 

This is utterly and completely true for the song culture of my people. I don't think I have to go into a detailed appraisal here of the great artistic merit of Negro folk music or of its unquestionable significance for all mankind. This is universally acknowledged. Even in capitalist America, where there exists racial discrimination of revolting proportions, where many "cultured" whites refuse to recognize the Negro as a human being—even there our folk songs constitute, as strange as it may seem, an object of national pride for many Americans. 

I am well aware that you in the Soviet Union, as nowhere else in the world, know how to honor and appreciate every artistic manifestation of a people's spirit, every genuine national art. I know, too, that Soviet audiences love and esteem the Negro people's songs, with which they have become familiar through the performances of such outstanding artists as Roland Hayes and Marian Anderson. 

I felt the full force of this passionate interest in and love of our folk songs during my own appearances in Moscow and Stalingrad. 

All the same, I also know that Soviet audiences are insufficiently acquainted with the history of Negro music and do not, perhaps, have a completely clear idea of the origins, sources, and the real content of Negro lyrics. This is all the more probable in that our official American  musicology and music criticism have done everything to distort the Negro historical truth, to conceal the real social roots of Negro art, and to depict Negro culture as imitative, as permeated by the spirit of Christian meekness and slavish submissiveness to fate. 

This is why I should like to tell Soviet readers the truth about the songs created by the American Negroes, songs which bear the poetic impress of many facets of folk life, of the very nature and soul of the people, of its dreams and aspirations, of its long, hard struggle for the right to life, liberty, and independence. 
The music of the American Negro has its origins in the ancient culture of Africa. American Negroes are the direct descendants of various African tribes which–from the beginning of the seventeenth century–-English, Dutch, Spanish, and French merchant-plunderers began transporting en masse for sale to America. Torn from their native land and national culture, thrust into the most difficult conditions of slave existence amidst an alien and hostile population, the Negroes had to adapt themselves to an alien life, language, culture, and religion. The Christian religion, imposed by force, was one of the powerful weapons for the spiritual enslavement of the Negroes. Faith in the afterlife where all earthly sufferings would be compensated with heavenly bliss, and the preaching of meekness and submissiveness-these were the basic religious tenets which helped the white exploiters to keep in harness the mass of Negro slaves who were subjected to the most brutal treatment in their backbreaking labor for their masters. 

And yet this enslaved people, oppressed by the double yoke of cruel exploitation and racial discrimination, gave birth to splendid, inspired, life-affirming songs. These songs reflected a spiritual force, a people's faith in itself and a faith in its great calling; they reflected the wrath and protest against the enslavers and the aspiration to freedom and happiness. These songs are striking in the noble beauty of their melodies, in the expressiveness and resourcefulness of their intonations, in the startling variety of their rhythms, in the sonority of their harmonies, and in the unusual distinctiveness and poetical nature of their forms. 

In trying to explain this "miracle," some American musicologists are ready to ascribe the phenomenon of Negro Spirituals to the influence of English church music, Puritan psalms, etc. The unscientific nature and falsity of such explanations are easily demonstrated by pointing out that the white population among which the mass of Negroes has lived in the American South has never–not in the past, not at present–had a musical culture of song (including church singing) that is in the slightest way comparable in artistic merit to the Negro Spirituals. The so-called psalmody, that is, the Christian hymns which the Negroes could hear in church, represents primitive choral singing in a slow, strictly measured tempo with traditional cadences. Could this sanctimonious music really be the model for inspired folk singers?

It would be wrong, of course, to deny the influence of church psalms or that of the folk songs of the immigrant population of America (the Scots, the Irish, the Spanish) on the development of Negro folk music. There were such influences. But they did not determine the distinctiveness and universal significance of the folk-song culture of the American Negroes. The power and beauty of Negro songs, the indigenous features that distinguish Negro folklore from culture, from the songs of all other peoples in the world, stem from ancient African songs, from the remarkable musicality which the Negroes inherited from their African ancestors. 

First of all, the idea has to be repudiated that African Negores were “savages”, people without culture. Many African peoples possessed their own distinctive and significant artistic culture long before the arrival of the European conquerors. They created their own language, distinguished-like Chinese-by the great precision and subtlety of intonational structure. They created a rich oral folklore, a distinctive decorative art (especially sculpture), and, finally, they possessed a highly developed and original musical art, distinguished by an extraordinary wealth of rhythm. 

Rhythm, the most intricate polyrhythmic constructions on the invariable and uniform pulsation of a basic, clear-cut meter–this is the basis of the musical speech of African Negroes. This basis has been fully preserved in the music of their American descendants. This characteristic syncopation, with all its rhythmic freedom and infinite variety, not only underwent its own development in Negro musical folklore, but also had a quite noticeable effect on the music of those peoples of North and South America among whom the Negroes lived. It is enough to become familiar with the folk music of Cuba, where Negro rhythms blend with elements of Spanish music; with the folk music of Brazil, which is based on Portuguese folk-song traditions fused with Negro influences; with the music of Haiti, which combines French and Negro features; and so on. 

I don't have to talk about the immense influence which Negro folk music has had on the development of the musical culture of the peoples of the USA. A particularly brilliant instance of this is seen in the works of the popular American composer of the middle of the last century, Stephen Foster, in whose numerous songs characteristic features of Negro music are distinctly perceptible. In still later times, these influences show up in full force in jazz. 

Rhythm is not the only feature which Negro music inherited from Africa. American Negro songs are close to African songs in the structure of their intonational harmony, in the improvising nature of their performing style, and in their form. 
But, of course, Spirituals are melodically far above their African forerunners. The American Negroes' sense of harmony is also highly developed. 

Let me relate here a story told by the well-known American historian of Afro-American music, Natalie Curtis-Burlin (Negro Folk Songs, Book III), about a certain German musician who visited Hampton Institute in Virginia and heard the singing of an immense chorus of Negro students. “Who worked with the chorus? This is remarkable!” exclaimed the musician. N. Curtis-Burlin's reply that no one had ever worked with the chorus did not satisfy him. "I mean," insisted the musician, "not who trained their voices (I understand, of course, that they sing without benefit of voice school), but who taught them the choral parts, who got them ready as a choral ensemble?"-No one. 

As N. Curtis-Burlin further relates, the nine hundred Negro boys and girls whose singing so impressed the German musician were not arranged and distributed by voice as in the usual chorus. The boys sat in a group on one side, the girls on the other. Each sang the part most comfortable for him within his normal range, free harmonizing the melody then and there during the singing. A first alto might turn up between two sopranos. A boy singing countertenor might be sitting next to a bass…
"But the amazing, inspired singing of this immense chorus sounds utterly faultless in intonation; there is not the slightest deviation from tonality, and all without any accompaniment. "
 
In fact, American Negroes have a remarkably developed flair for harmony. There is even a saying that aptly reflects this innate harmonic gift of the Negro people: "Put together the first four Negro fellows that come along and you've got a quartet." 

This tendency to harmonize melodies, such a natural phenomenon among the people, found its fullest expression in the performances of Spirituals (spiritual hymns), as well as in the performance of work songs (the so-called Plantation Songs), the performances of these usually being choral ones. 

The wealth and diversity of the melodic language of Negro songs is startling. A few examples here will suffice to show how freely and flexibly the melodic line moves, how expressive and noble is its outline, and how multifarious are the rhythmic-harmonic structures and forms of these folk songs. 

Here is one of the most splendid songs of my people: "Go Down Moses," a magnificent hymn, calling the people to the struggle for freedom. 

Go down, Moses, 'way down in Egypt land, 
Tell ole Pharoah, 
To let my people go. 
When Israel was in Egypt's land, 
Oppressed so hard they could not stand. . . etc. 

The forms of this song as in many other Spirituals are connected with religion. It would be a complete mistake, however, to conclude from this that the origins and content of these songs are purely religious. As I have already said, the Christian religion, propagated among the Negroes by force, was one of the strongest weapons for the spiritual enslavement of the people. The only book which the Negroes knew before the Civil-War period and the abolition of slavery (1863) was the Bible. Oppressed and persecuted, subjected to the curelest exploitation, the Negro people was very susceptible to the consolations promised by the Church. The Negroes sought in the Bible stories analogies with the history of their own slave existence, and drew from these stories faith in the coming retribution for their oppressors, faith in the triumph of truth and justice. 

The real content of the Spirituals in the overwhelming majority of cases was far removed from religious concepts. These were folk hymns, the poetical embodiment of the sufferings and struggle of an entire people, of its philosophy of life and its character, of its hopes and aspirations. The Spirituals reflected all the manifestations of the Negro people's social life. Therefore, the song "Go Down Moses," far from being a religious hymn, is rather an impassioned call to the struggle for the liberation of the Negro people. Moses, and the pharoahs, and the Jewish people are all merely poetic symbols which inspired the unknown singer who created this amazing song. 

Similarly, there is little that is religious in the song "Heab'n": 

I got a robe, you got a robe, 
All of God's children got a robe. 
When I get to heab'n goin' to put on my robe,
Goin' to shout all over God's Heab'n. 
Ev'rybody talkin' about heab'n ain't goin' there,
Goin' to shout all over God's heab'n. 

According to the testimony of the greatest Negro historian of the nineteenth century, Frederick Douglass, the heaven mentioned in this song is the North, the northern states of America where the Negroes, in contrast to the southern states, were not in bondage. In the minds of the benighted and downtrodden slaves of Alabama, Virginia, Florida, and Georgia, the northern states constituted that promised land for which the Negro population of the South yearned heart and soul. 

It seems to me that the same explanation fully reveals the real content of the song "Nobody Knows de Trouble I See": 

Oh, nobody knows de trouble I see, 
Nobody knows my sorrow... 
If you get there before me 
Tell them I'm comin'. 

With respect to genre, Negro musical folklore is very diversified. Along with a vast quantity of spiritual hymns, the American Negroes created a multitude of work songs, songs of lyrical content (the Blues), and dance tunes. Finally, recent investigations have for the first time revealed a whole new field of Negro songs–songs of protest, songs directly calling the Negroes to the struggle for their rights, and against lynch-law, against their exploiters, against capitalists. The work songs, as well as the songs of protest, are the fruit of collective creation. Their rhythm is born out of the work process. It may be the measured beat of the crowbar or pickaxe at excavation sites. It may be the synchronized movement of dockworkers loading barges. It may be the hard, monotonous work of the cotton pickers. These songs usually begin with an introduction by the leader that defines the rhythm of the work, and then the chorus joins in. Here is one model for such songs, “Cott’n Pickin’ Song,” created by the Negro cotton pickers of Florida:

Chorus: 
This cott'n want a pickin' 
So bad! 
This cott'n want a pickin', So bad! 
Goin' clean all over this farm.

Leader: 
When boss sold that cott'n, 
I ask for my half. 
He told me I chopped out 
My half with the grass.
 
In the song there is a regular alternation between the refrain of the entire chorus and the recitative improvisations of the leader. The content of these improvisations, connected with the life of the given group of workers, at times is permeated by a venomous irony directed at the white bosses, at times has the character of a direct protest. 

A good example of a work song is the one I performed, "Water-Boy"; it, too, is built on the alternation between a free, recitative solo and a rhythmic, precise choral refrain. 

A special place in the corpus of Negro songs is occupied by songs of protest, which were first collected in the southern states in the nineteen-twenties by the American journalist, L. Gellert. These songs manifest in full measure the Negro workers' heroic revolutionary spirit, their hatred of their exploiters, and their yearning for the struggle for their human rights and freedom. 

The hard, exhausting work with a pickaxe or shovel in hand defines the rhythm and character of the melody. The example below gives a clear idea of the content of these songs: 

Sistren an' brethen, stop foolin' wid pray. 
When Black face is lifted, Lord turnin' away.
Heart filled wid sadness, head bowed down wid woe,
In his hour of trouble, where's a black man to go?
We's buryin' a brudder, dey kill fo' de crime 
Tryin' to keep what was his all de time. 
When we's tucked him on under, what you goin' to do? 
Wait till it come dey's arousin' fo' you? 
Yo' head tain' no apple fo' danglin' from a tree
Yo' body no carcass for barbacuin' on a spree.
Stand on yo' feet, club gripped 'tween yo' hands,
Spill dere blood too, show 'em yo's is a man's. 

While Spirituals, work songs, and songs of protest are collective creations and are performed collectively among the people, the blues (that is, lyrical songs, most frequently about love) express the emotional state of the individual. In the blues you frequently hear complaints about the evil fate of separation, about one's surroundings, about the hard and dangerous existence of a lonely creature in a faraway and alien big city. 

In contrast to Spirituals, many blues have authors. A popular Negro composer, for example, is William Handy, the author of many famous blues, including "Saint Louis Blues," "Florida Blues," "Memphis Blues," etc.

The blues played a big role in the development of jazz and became the basis for contemporary dance (foxtrot, blues, tango). 

However, this is the topic for a special article and I cannot treat it in detail here. Let me just say that under capitalist conditions, where all forms and expressions of American art must subordinate themselves to the demands of the market, our native Negro music has been subjected to the very worst exploitation. Commercial jazz has prostituted and ruthlessly perverted many splendid models of Negro folk music and has corrupted and debased many talented Negro musicians In order to satisfy the desires of capitalist society. 

But, all the same, our splendid songs have survived and shall survive, enriching the real culture of America, providing my country's Composers with an inexhaustible supply of material for their creative work. 

Recent decades have seen the emergence of a series of talented Negro composers who have devoted their creative energies to the cultivation of the incalculable riches of our musical folklore. I list here such names as Samuel Coleridge Taylor, Henry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Dawson, William Grant-Still, Duke Ellington. 

These composers, each in his own way, have tried to find the way to creating a national Negro symphonic, oratorical, and operatic music. But these are so far just the first steps. We are still awaiting our Glinka who on the basis of Negro folk music will create a great,  universally significant art, who will lay the foundation for a national school of composers.

Meanwhile our serious composers find themselves in very difficult circumstances. Creatively and organizationally they are not united. Their material existence is far from secure. 

We are just now making attempts to unite Negro artists, performing artists, and musicians. For this purpose a progressive organization has been created in New York-"The Committee of Negroes in the Arts." Our dream is to establish creative contact with persons active in the Soviet Arts. We want to learn from your remarkable experience of building up a socialist culture; we want our art to be just as progressive and purposeful, just as national in spirit as the great art of the great Soviet people.