Slavery's Unchained Melodies

Spirituals, or 'Sorrow Songs,' Find a Reverent New Voice By Neely TuckerWashington Post Staff WriterSunday, February 20, 2005; Page D01 Tucked inside a rectangular folder, hidden in the deep recesses of the Library of Congress, rest a few crumbling pages of paper. Librarian Samuel Perryman sets the sheets on a table. "This is a first edition and I don't know if it was reprinted," he says. "When this one evaporates, that may be it." The yellowed rectangles of paper are one of the few remaining editions of 1872's "Jubilee Songs," one of the nation's first printings of slave songs, also known as Negro spirituals -- what folklorists call one of the most unique and enduring bodies of work in American music. The weathered songbook was published by Nashville's Fisk University for its Jubilee Singers, most of whom were freed slaves. Today, it has little or no binding left. Many of the few dozen pages are not attached to the rest, hence the folder. Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38674-2005Feb19.html