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The Souls of Black Folk · ¶463

The songs are indeed the siftings of centuries; the music is far more ancient than the words, and in it we can trace here and there signs of development. My grandfather’s grandmother was seized by an evil Dutch trader two centuries ago; and coming to the valleys of the Hudson and Housatonic, black, little, and lithe, she shivered and shrank in the harsh north winds, looked longingly at the hills, and often crooned a heathen melody to the child between her knees, thus:

Three lines of musical notation with syllabic lyrics, beginning ‘Do ba-na co-ba, ge-ne me, ge-ne me!’; the melody introduced by Du Bois as sung by his grandfather’s grandmother. — Enlarge illustration · Source
Original score image supplied with Project Gutenberg ebook 408; reproduced unchanged. The source does not identify the underlying print edition. Description added by Gloss.

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Project Gutenberg ebook 408
Project Gutenberg ebook 408
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