Lyrics of the Afro-American Spiritual: A Documentary Collection.

Reviewed by Dena J. Epstein University of Chicago (retired

In compiling a collection of the words of spirituals without music, the editor offers as his purpose "to emphasize the substantial value of the words themselves . . . [which] tell a tremendous story of a people . . . a theology of salvation" (ix). The editor, Erskine Peters, Professor of English and African-American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, specializes in "Afro-poetics in the United States and philosophical concerns in early African-American writing" (464), and he designed this anthology as "a thematic reference" for "literary and cultural historians, general historians, and theologians." To demonstrate "the great thematic richness of the songs," he has devised nine subject categories, ranging from "Sorrow, Alienation, and Desolation," "Consolation and Faith," and "Jubilation and Triumph" to "Spiritual Progress" and "Transcendence." These categories "are not intended to be absolute. Many songs could easily be moved from . . . to another" (ix). Indeed, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" is included in both "Lyrics of Sorrow, Alienation and Desolation" (42) and in "Lyrics of Deliverance" (192-93). Within each category, the texts are arranged alphabetically by title. Although many texts retell stories from the Bible, there is no category for biblical narratives.

The volume opens with an "historical and theoretical discussion" (xv-xxxi) and has brief introductory statements before each category. Nine hundred seventy-eight texts were selected from the several thousand that are published, a few with variants, "since it is . . . the voluminous phrasing that [Peters] wish[es] to make accessible" (ix). Peters has chosen "not to replicate the various orthographies" used by the original editors. Not only does he standardize spelling, but he has substituted standard English words for the original dialect - e.g., "Bell Da Ring" is given as "Bell Done Ring," and "yedde" as "heard" (158) - all without comment. In order to conserve space, some repetitions are eliminated. What the reader finds in most cases is one version of a spiritual text with a symbol indicating the source from which it was taken.

The texts are treated as fixed literary works with little consideration for their fluid, oral, always changing folk nature. Field versions are interspersed with sophisticated concert versions, such as those by Roland Hayes - some with repetition, some without. Only occasionally does the layout suggest the interplay of call-and-response, leader and chorus, as in "Were You There" (47), despite the statement in the introduction that "the Afro-American spiritual is fundamentally antiphonal in structure, the verse and refrain or chorus being sung alternately" (xx). Some texts begin with the verse, some with the chorus. Refrains usually are not identified.

The thematic arrangement and the lack of textual documentation may expedite a search for appropriate texts by theologians and literary scholars. In "a documentary collection," historians would expect to find information about the first appearance of a text, how it was changed over time, how the sources were selected from the many that were available, and how individual texts were chosen from those sources.

Chronologically the sources range from 1867 (Slave Songs of the United States, edited by Allen, Ware, and Garrison) to 1984 ("Mount Zion," arranged by Wendell Whalum, published by Lawson-Gould Music Publishers). Geographically they stretch from Virginia to Louisiana. But neither chronology nor geography is recognized in this collection.

These spirituals were chosen from a highly selective group of sources: fifteen collections of spirituals, one slave narrative, one journal article, four publishers of sheet music, and the editor's memory. A reader might like to know the editor's reasons for preferring sheet music published by Kjos, Lawson-Gould, Malcolm, and Schirmer to Harry T. Burleigh's Plantation Melodies Old and New (1901) or Clarence Cameron White's Forty Negro Spirituals (1927), titles listed in the "Select Bibliography: Song Collections" (415-17), or other titles discussed in the introduction.

In describing spirituals as "chronicles, homilies, affirmations, mantras, and jubilations" (xviii), Peters does not discuss the possible temporal meanings of some of the texts. Were "Go Down, Moses" (166-67) and "Steal Away" (191) purely religious in their connotation, or were they also intended as signals? The interrelationship of sacred and secular in Afro-American folk culture is not considered in any depth. Still another omission is a recognition of wandering verses, such as "Before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave," which appears in "Holy Battle" (16), "Oh, Freedom" (138), and possibly elsewhere. Literary scholars, theologians, and historians all would be interested in this phenomenon.

While most of the texts do indeed come from the sources listed on pages xiii-xiv, there are some anomalies. On page 135 the text of "Many Thousands Gone" is attributed to "Douglass" with no further explanation. No source of that name is listed in the introduction or the list of sources (255).

After the final thematic category, "Lyrics of Transcendence," two selective bibliographies are provided, "Song Collections" (415-17) and "History and Interpretation" (419-20), followed by indices to first lines (421-37) and titles (439-55), and a general index (457-63) to the introductory material, both to the volume as a whole and to each category. There is no subject index to the texts.

As a volume in "The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Black Music," Lyrics of the Afro-American Spiritual: A Documentary Collection is disappointing, despite the wealth of texts presented. Changes and omissions in the texts are not identified, interrelationships between and among texts are not discussed, and, most serious of all, the editor's idiosyncratic methods of selecting sources and individual texts are not explained.