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27. Music There were originally plans for an entire book project to be called “History of Negro Music and Musicians in Chicago” that began in late 1939 and continued to July 1940. When Bontemps was first hired on the Illinois Writers’ Project, he supervised this study. An outline by Bontemps lists chapters on ragtime, the blues, spirituals, classical music, work songs, and boogie woogie. Several interviews were conducted by IWP worker George L. Lewis for the study. The chapter that appears here came from the more recent of two draft chapters found in Bontemps’s papers at Syracuse University. According to an internal memo, both of the drafts were written by Robert Lucas, with many corrections by Bontemps. The editorial changes were incorporated by the editor, although comments suggest entire sections were to be either eliminated or rewritten. The decision was made by the editor to retain all of the material in the draft chapter as it reveals many details about musical history in Chicago that may be of value to scholars today. Under slavery a familiar command on Southern plantations was, “Make some noise there!” Let me hear you!” The Negro hands usually obliged by singing. Knowing only a few songs and snatches, they were forced to improvise. A sullen, silent slave was not to be trusted. A slave working in a thicket or plowing in a distant corn field might fall asleep at his job or make a break for freedom; there was a double reason to require a song of him. This tradition may or may not have been responsible for the Northern Negro’s inclination toward music. At any rate, a “dandy Negro with his violin” was providing music for a dancing room in Chicago as early as 1833. Not long thereafter a Negro musician caused quite a stir among the citizens of Quincy. In 1851, the Whig reported an article from the Louisville Courier which describes, “Cary, a Negro, or rather a mulatto, who lived in this city some ten or twelve years since. He was an excellent performer on the fife, flute and other musical instruments, and belonged to the band of the old Louisville Guards. . . . He was recently at Indianapolis and he seemed to have taken the ‘Railroad City’ completely by storm.” The Quincy newspaper recalled that Cary had been to Illinois. “Cary visited this city some years ago. . . . He gave several concerts—which were numerously attended.” It was later, however, that the Negro’s talent for classical music was manifested, and groups of Jubilee singers were organized in Illinois as well as in other states. Illinois, like Dolinar_Text.indd 223 3/14/13 9:59 AM 224 Chapter twenty-seven the rest of the world, responded to this new music. These American folk songs had a strange, haunting quality which contrasted vividly with the popular minstrel music. Dr. Alain Locke has said: [The] universality of the Spirituals looms more and more as they stand the test of time. They have outlived the particular generation and the peculiar conditions which produced them; they have survived in turn the contempt of the slave owners, the conventionalizations of formal religion, the repressions of Puritanism, the corruptions of sentimental balladry, and the neglect and disdain of second generation respectability. They have escaped the lapsing conditions and the fragile vehicle of folk art, and come firmly into the context of formal music. Only classics can survive such things. Early newspapers record the success enjoyed by Negro groups singing these classics in Illinois. The Hampton Singers included the state of Illinois in their 1874 tour to raise funds for Hampton Institute. The Chicago Evening Journal commented at the close of their engagement. “The singers are superior to the Tennesseans, and their songs are of the same characteristic order. Among the most enjoyable as well as harmonious pieces were ‘Keep Me From Sinking Down’; ‘My Lord Delivered Daniel’; ‘The Old Slave’s Farewell,’ a bass solo; ‘The Little Octroon,’ a soprano solo; and a plantation melody called ‘Oh, Swing Low Sweet Chariot.’ The voices are well trained and blend sweetly together.”1 The Tennesseans, here referred to, were singing in Illinois at the same time. They too received favorable notices. During the 1870s and 1880s, Blind Tom, “wonderful musical prodigy,” made frequent visits to Chicago.2 On March 18, 1875, the Inter Ocean announced that, “the Hallelujah Band of colored singers, formerly slaves in the South, will sing some of their pathetic slave songs at the Oakland Methodist Episcopal...

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