A long time coming: Harry Belafonte's glorious music history lesson.

Why didn't The Long Road to Freedom release as planned?

Harry Belafonte: The piece was made possible because of an alliance that RCA had with Reader's Digest magazine. Reader's Digest, back then, had a special relationship with the Record of the Month Club, and it gave special packages to them of RCA classical works and popular works. On some occasions, they decided to step out and support original works that were not immersed in pop culture or the classical form, but came from another place. This work was such an attempt, it took us years to complete, and by the time the work was ready to be released, RCA and Reader's Digest had dissolved their relationship. And neither camp could take on the work as a stand-alone except in some diminished or contained way. So I used what veto power I had to hold onto it, expecting that in the not-too-distant future, like a matter of months or a couple of years, someone else would come along and see the beauty and wisdom of the work. So 30 years later, here we are.

Did you make additional adjustments because of the advances in music technology over the past 30 years?

HB: We used digital technology to remaster the work and remove certain surface noises that were natural at the time the record was made. Because we recorded most of it in a place called Webster Hall, which was one of those acoustically perfect structures, there was, from time to time, voluminous sound pouring in from the streets, and you could pick up some of these intrusions on the tape. We felt very disturbed with these modern sounds, horns and whatnot, seeping through in the middle of this rich music of the past. So we were able to remove those sounds and put out a fairly clean version. But from a musical point of view, nothing was disturbed. Everything is as it was.

I imagine the selection process was both exhilarating and frustrating. When you chose the repertoire, what were your criteria?

HB: Of course, your observations are absolutely correct. We had to find some way to narrow this enormous volume of work covering the history of a people over a couple of centuries into some form that would give the listener at least an appetite to want to hear more and know more. We decided to go chronologically, looking at the milestones in black history from the African shores where slavery started to the turn of the century and the threshold of modern technology. What we did was to start with the African period of silence, as I call it, when slaves were not permitted to speak or sing or dance or to have any voice until they began to use the voice of their masters. We then went on to plantation songs, women's songs, and through the Civil War. We kept all the music that had never seen the light of day, except through what Alan Lomax and some other field recorders had done during the 1930s. Then we decided to get great musicologists like Leonard De Paur and have them use their knowledge of black music to transcribe the music of the past into notation, retaining the integrity of the harmony that came from past voicings.

What did De Paur contribute to the project?

HB: We had previously decided that we could not take the technology into the field and get what we wanted; it would be better to bring the field to the technology so we could have control. And when Mr. De Paur discovered that some things eluded him musically--which was hard to believe, given the depth of his own musical knowledge and creativity--we just went down to, for instance, the Georgia Sea Islands and brought up Bessie Jones and various local choirs. And so much of the slave sound had been unmolested and had been retained throughout the century that we had it almost in unabridged form. What he did was to add those nuances, which "enhanced" the music without disturbing the integrity of its origin.

What piece of history, musical or otherwise, came as the biggest surprise to you while you were researching the project?

HB: What I really did not realize until this project was the inordinate extent to which the African-ness of the culture resonates throughout black music, despite all of the cultural containments that have been put upon the black populous. It is a remarkable phenomenon among a group of people who were so overwhelmed by other societies, who have for so long appeared contained from having any relationship to their roots. You have to understand that when a people are contained and kept from speaking any language until they can speak the master's tongue, you become a voiceless creature. You didn't learn grammar; you had to stumble your way through learning a way to communicate with the master that was acceptable and non-threatening. And one of the things in the process was to submit to his religious beliefs. So Christianity became central to an African slave's existence. And through this mechanism of Christianity, they could exploit the continuance of slavery. And despite all that oppression, Africa still dominated not only the black voice, but I would say all of American culture, as well. Rock `n' roll is black, African expression. If it wasn't for Chuck Berry and the blues, I wonder what we'd be singing.

If someone else put a box set like this together, say, 50 years from now, what do you think our current era will be remembered for in terms of African American music?

HB: A time when black culture has been at its lowest, I think, and at its most narrow, conceptually. Never before have I known the black community to be so "mono" in its relationship to its own culture. Even after the enormous eruption of the African continent to independence, the great sensitivity that's been forced upon everybody in terms of Afro-centricity, and the civil rights movement's toppling of racial oppression in its legal form, I would say that if you asked 85 or 90% of black people in America, "Where is Mall?" or, "Who is the president of Nigeria?" they wouldn't know. They would know Mandela, because he was a phenomenon that the world was required to know. But black America has very little relationship to its Afro-centric origins. It doesn't know much about Brazilian or Caribbean culture. It knows nuances, but not the length and breadth. It's not on the menu of the 40 million blacks who live in this country. And most of the African musicians who come to this country don't have a black constituency. If it weren't for an audience of about 85% white folks, there'd be no audience. Now this is not a criticism--and I hasten to make this point--it's an observation that I think requires greater intelligence and understanding to see how this has grown out of the severe way Africa has been treated in the national vocabulary.

For example, rap, which started off as one of the most powerful expressions at the close of the 20th century, was not initially seen as viable by commercial forces. But when it prevailed, and its content was filled with such protest and such remarkable poetry, its economic value was seen--and that was when it became corrupted. As a consequence, I think it pushed jazz, blues, and other forms of our own music to the side. And that context is why I say I think that black culture is at the narrowest point I've ever known it to be, when, in fact, it should be at the threshold of its greatest moment.

While the artistry of Harry Belafonte is familiar to millions, few knew of a project that worked on from 1961 to 1971--until now. This fall RCA/Buddha released The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music, an incredible collection that has remained unheard for decades. The project grew out of Belafonte's desire to accurately portray the music of black Americans, from their earliest voyages to the "New World" up until the dawn of the 20th century. Rather than use primitive field recordings in the spirit of Alan Lomax, Belafonte, the anthology's principal producer, and musicologist Leonard De Paur decided to document all the nuances of this unrecorded material in present musical terms, bringing in a number of guest artists for a modern, professional recording. The result is a fascinating journey through African American music, from early West African work songs to the beginning of the blues in the early 1900s. It's a sweeping, 80-song course in the history of a people and the evolution of their music. Now, more than 30 years after its completion, The Long Road to Freedom is available as a glorious five-CD box set with a companion book that features extensive notes and essays in addition to poignant photographs and the artwork of Charles White.