What are the sorrow songs?

W.E.B. Du Bois, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

W.E.B. Du Bois answers

The sorrow songs are the music the enslaved made — and they are, I have long believed, the greatest gift the Negro people have given to the world.1 They came out of the South to me as a child, one by one, and yet at once I knew them as of me and of mine.2 They are not simply pleasant airs, not the caricature the minstrel stage made of them. They are the articulate message of the slave to the world — the music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways.3

The music is far more ancient than the words. My grandfather's grandmother was seized by an evil Dutch trader two centuries ago, and coming to the valleys of the Hudson and Housatonic she crooned a heathen melody to the child between her knees — and that melody traveled two hundred years down to us, its words unknown, its meaning felt in the bone.4

This was primitive African music carried across the Middle Passage and transformed by the American experience of bondage into something new and yet ancient. Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom. And so by fateful chance the Negro folk-song stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas.5

It has been neglected, half despised, persistently mistaken — and still it remains the singular spiritual heritage of the nation. I first heard these songs truly in the South, not the second-hand rendering of youth who never knew slavery, but sung by those who made them, in the land of their American birth.6 The air of intense excitement that possessed the mass of black folk gathered around that little plain church — the pythian madness, the demoniac possession, the gaunt-cheeked brown woman who leaped straight into the air and shrieked — that was the living body from which the sorrow songs came.7

They were not performance. They were the soul speaking under pressure it could not otherwise bear. And what the songs carry is not only sorrow. Art is not simply works of art; it is the spirit that knows Beauty, that has music in its soul and the color of sunsets in its headkerchiefs, that can dance on a flaming world and make the world dance, too.8

The sorrow songs are that spirit's most concentrated form — the siftings of centuries, the voice of exile, the witness no amount of hostile history can gainsay.

Sources

  1. the Negro folk-song—the rhythmic cry of the slave—stands to-day not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas... it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people.
    The Souls of Black Folk, pp. 210–211
  2. Ever since I was a child these songs have stirred me strangely. They came out of the South unknown to me, one by one, and yet at once I knew them as of me and of mine.
    The Souls of Black Folk, pp. 210–211
  3. They are the music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways.
    The Souls of Black Folk, pp. 212–213
  4. My grandfather's grandmother was seized by an evil Dutch trader two centuries ago; and coming to the valleys of the Hudson and Housatonic, black, little, and lithe, she shivered and shrank in the harsh north winds, looked longingly at the hills, and often crooned a heathen melody to the child between her knees.
    The Souls of Black Folk, pp. 212–213
  5. Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And so by fateful chance the Negro folk-song—the rhythmic cry of the slave—stands to-day not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas.
    The Souls of Black Folk, pp. 210–211
  6. I heard the Negro folksong first in Great Barrington, sung by the Hampton Singers. But that was second-hand, sung by youth who never knew slavery. I now heard the Negro songs by those who made them and in the land of their American birth.
    The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois - A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century, pp. 122–123
  7. A sort of suppressed terror hung in the air and seemed to seize them—a pythian madness, a demoniac possession, that lent terrible reality to song and word... the gaunt-cheeked brown woman beside me suddenly leaped straight into the air and shrieked like a lost soul, while round about came wail and groan and outcry.
    The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois - A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century, pp. 122–123
  8. art is not simply works of art; it is the spirit that knows Beauty, that has music in its soul and the color of sunsets in its headkerchiefs; that can dance on a flaming world and make the world dance, too.
    Dusk of Dawn - An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept, pp. 111–112