Existing comment:
Cabin and Plantation Songs, 1876
Thomas P. Fenner, Frederick G. Rathbun, and Bessie Cleveland
Before the advent of sound recordings, traditional music was documented in manuscript or printed forms. Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute founder Samual Armstrong and his music director, Thomas Fenner, traveled across Virginia recording the songs of African Americans working in the fields and in the tobacco factories of Richmond. Included here are such well-known songs as Nobody Knows de Trouble I've Seen, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Babylon's Fallin', Many Thousands Gone, and Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child. |