Etta Moten Barnett lecture, "The Folklore of My People," at the University of Iowa, January 29, 1976

Speaker 1: The following is an address by actress and concert artist Etta Moten Barnett. Mrs. Barnett spoke at the University of Iowa, January 29th, 1976, opening the Eighth Annual Black Kaleidoscope Series. Introducing Mrs. Barnett is Fred Woodard, an instructor in the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Iowa. Fred Woodard: This evening, it is my pleasure and privilege to introduce Etta Moten Barnett. Mrs. Barnett is a former actress, concert artist, radio personality. She was born in San Antonio, Texas. She attended elementary and junior high schools in Waco, Texas, and Los Angeles, California. She attended high school, senior high school in Kansas City, Kansas. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, with a major in Voice at the University of Kansas. She has done some advanced study in Speech and Psychology at Northwestern University. Fred Woodard: Among some of our early experiences in the performing arts are the following; soloist in the Jackson Jubilee Singers on the Red Circuit Path for the Chautauquas, a program producer for her own show at the University of Kansas and her senior recital at the University of Kansas in 1931 earned an invitation to perform solo work with the world famous Eva Jessye Choir in New York City. Also, among her early experiences in the performing arts is the well known folk opera, Porgy and Bess. There she formed as Bess with Todd Duncan. This opera, as most of us know, sustained a Broadway performance, and then Mrs. Barnett and company did presentations across the nation. Other Broadway musicals were Fast and Furious, Sugar Hill and Zombie. Mrs. Barnett has also done dramatic presentations on Broadway and most notably Lysistrata with Rex Ingram and Leigh Whipper. Fred Woodard: I was completely taken by some comments that I read concerning Etta Moten's performances. I'd like to share them with you. [Ronald Coleman] of New York Daily Mirror said, "Etta Moten has taken over the role of Bess and, though a contralto, acts and sings it beautifully. Gershwin's judgment was excellent. It is said that he had her in mind when he wrote his masterpiece." Russell MacLaughlin of the Detroit News said, "Etta Moten lavishes a huge dramatic voice on the part of Bess and gives it the best performance, doubtless, it ever had." Fred Woodard: Mrs. Barnett has movie credits as well. The Gold Diggers of 1933. Now this was a movie with Joan Blondell and Dick Powell. Also Flying Down to Rio, a movie with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. She has had a number of national experiences in the performing arts, signing with the Chicago Symphony. She has hosted a nationwide ... I'm sorry. Television program, Etta Moten with Music and Conversation. I hope I have that correct. She has been the community relations director for the Chicago Station, WNUS. There are international experiences in the performing arts as well. Concert tours in Canada, Argentina, Brazil, England, and for the BBC, tours of major West African countries. Among the international experience as well, Mrs. Barnett was an Ambassador of Goodwill with her husband Claude A. Barnett. She was a member of the United States official delegation to independence celebrations in Ghana in 1957, the inaugural ceremonies of Ghana's first president in 1960, the independence ceremonies of Nigeria, the independence ceremonies of Zambia. Fred Woodard: She has made official visits to Liberia, the Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Libya, Ethiopia, Uganda, and the Cameroons. I am somewhat anxious to pass on to you now Mrs. Etta Moten Barnett. It seems that when I start to rock back and forth, it's time for me to stop and let the performer come on. I have had the pleasure of being with Mrs. Barnett for the last two days, and I have been overwhelmed by her graciousness, and I hope that you in the back will come a little closer so that you can get a little more of what I've been exposed to the last two days. Thank you very much. Etta Moten Barn...: Thank you. Won't you draw nigh, as they say in church. Etta Moten Barn...: Thank you very, very much for that extensive introduction. There's a story that goes for that kind of introduction and that is there was this little boy with a little calf in a lane, and there was not enough room for the calf and a car. The little boy looked up and the car was coming, and so he tried to pull the calf out of the way. The calf planted his little feet in the pathway, in the road and didn't move. So he pulled any yanked and he wouldn't move. Etta Moten Barn...: So the little boy went and said, "Mister, maybe if you sounded your horn, he would move." So the man sounded his horn, he was angry about it anyway, and the horn was so loud. He said, "Just toot your horn, please, sir." So he tooted the horn. It was so loud that the little boy was frightened and the calf was frightened. He ran over into a field, fell into a lake and was drowned, the little calf was. So the little boy went back to the man and said, "Mister, don't do think that was an awful big toot for such an insignificant little calf?" Etta Moten Barn...: That was quite a toot you gave me by way of introduction, but I thank you for it just the same. Because the people here are much too young to know about the things that you mentioned, other people that you mentioned. So I guess it was kind of necessary for us to get acquainted through that type of an introduction. Because when one speaks to such an erudite group as this, one should have had her experience or her reputation. So since I didn't have the reputation, he had to let you know about the experience. I thought when I saw your marvelous director of Afro-American studies, Dr. Turner, up in Wisconsin, I talked about minorities and I talked about music, talked about something that I knew, talked about something I'd experienced, but I was simply petrified with fear, really, at that type of a gathering, even as I am now. Etta Moten Barn...: But he told me that, "You know, I wish that you would come," and he told me about this program, the kaleidoscope, and that, "I would like for you to come and get acquainted with our students." Because he felt, I guess he saw that there was never and never has been a generation gap between me and the youth whom I have met. Because I have five grandchildren, I have three daughters, I identify with my grandchildren almost better than their mothers identify with them because somehow they're too close, I guess. But so that they keep me on edge, right up with it. They keep granny together because they somehow think that granny must be together in order that they might have an ally, really. Etta Moten Barn...: So they do have. I know how to do everything from the monkey to the bus stop. They teach me all of these things. Just learned the bus stop the other day, because that's the very latest one I heard about, the dance. So that I bring to you a few thoughts about the people, the folk, as it pertains to music. I saw today, I was in a discussion today in poetry as the lore and the music ... and I mean the poetry of a folk, of a people. Miss [Fabul's] class. It was a very, very interesting discussion. Etta Moten Barn...: I knew many of the poets personally. One of the joys of living a long time is to remember when. And so acquainted am I with the term folklore and the specific folklore of a number of countries and/or regions of this world that it had not entered my mind fully that a writer or a speaker would give a definition of the term folk. Because you see, I'm going to talk about the folk music, the Afro-American folk music and the Afro-American folklore as projected in the music. Etta Moten Barn...: As I thought about my address, numerous little melodious ditties went through my head and I hummed them around the house. Some of these little ditties had authors who could be recognized and some had no authors at all, the mere hand-me-downs. I said to myself, "Oh, I have it." Those without authors yet catch the spirit of a people or a region or a nation, and are vibrant with passions and yearnings and the will of a people and live on and on of their own accord. That's just about the definition that I would give as folklore. Etta Moten Barn...: That was my immediate orientation, but I needed more in the way of audience orientation. The term folk is a powerful word in all languages because it means people. When we attach the term lore to it, we're speaking precisely of something created and used by common people. The common people ring through any word which has folk in it. I concluded further that the chronology of our present era affords me a little more by way of definition. For example, we have entered into the bicentennial celebration, denoting the 200th birthday of this nation. There's hardly a day which passes when radio or television, that they don't have on some heroic incident of our 200 year history. Some of these incidents are rooted in history and historians have traced their accuracy in terms of the original settings and happenings. Etta Moten Barn...: Then with some of these tales and legends of our history, no one has been able to attach specific authors. It occurred to someone who told it first, and then some others who expanded upon it and perhaps each generation expanded upon the original presentation and becomes cherished folklore. I'm always intrigued by Parson Weems who wrote one of the earliest biographies of George Washington. I know you've heard it. He held that George Washington never told a lie and you've heard it. Yes, my father with my little hatchet, I cut down the cherry tree. I'm sure that such a lone incident was not and is not now sufficient evidence to warrant that generalization that he never told a lie, but it is wonderful folklore told down through two centuries when we were teaching Sunday school or in early days of schooling, when we wanted to deepen the appreciation for the first president of the United States. It is good folklore, but not all together true. It doesn't have to be. Etta Moten Barn...: Every high school student knows what folklore is and can identify examples. The definition which I set forth at this time holds that folklore encompasses the traditions, beliefs, legends, sayings, customs, milieu and so forth of a people. These beliefs, legends and sayings, though difficult to trace to the first person who told them, have come down through the ages to us, oft times embellished and magnified upon a larger canvas of storytelling. I do not wish to give the impression that folk tales, folk ways and so forth are not serious enough to engage the attention of humanistic scholars. But for there has emerged a school of researchers who are attempting to the systematic and scientific study of folklore. Etta Moten Barn...: Our folklore, the traditions, beliefs, morays and legends and so forth are reflected in such artistic media as poetry and verse as I told you, I heard today, and ballads, which you have heard like John Henry and that sort of song, ballad. Novels, dramas, and all forms of the spoken word. Likewise may these traditions, beliefs, legends, folktales, and so forth be reflected in the artistic medium of music, whether in instrumental music and/or the written word transposed into the singing word. Etta Moten Barn...: To sweep through African folklore and music, which would cover centuries of African traditions, beliefs, and legends, and so forth as reflected in that music south of the Sahara, the major Black folk geographical area of Africa, and put them in historical settings, would take a full university semester. Equally, to sweep through the 350 years of folklore of the Blacks in this American soil, for we did come to these parts in the United States in 1619, and relate to you the heritage of the music they brought from Africa, then trace for you the transplantation of those African musical forms upon a new geographical and cultural environment, with the traditional elements being modified in the light of their new surroundings, and to identify every item of original folklore would require another semester. Since you're not getting credit for this course, we won't go into that. Etta Moten Barn...: No American authority in music on West Africa has been able to give to history the full development of West African music in those early days prior to the slaves coming here. The simple reason is that the written records have been done in a spasmodic fashion, and most of what we know has been oral tradition. So eminent scholar as Eileen Southern holds that two major sources of historical information are before us. The oral traditions of the land and the books written by European travelers and traders. Etta Moten Barn...: There was however, a premise of music in the lives of Africans. African kings and rulers attached dancers and singers and music makers to their courts. All public occasions were interspersed with appropriate ceremonial dancing and by the common folk. And this is done to this day. Those who attend celebrations in Africa today, 1975, observe the pomp and splendor which Western protocol requires. But these events are never concluded until the native dancers, the indigenous dancers, don't say native when you get to Africa, indigenous dancers and singers are allowed to enshrine the occasion with song and dance. This is the tradition, a part of their folklore. Long before any of that ever came to these shores, that was done there. Etta Moten Barn...: Every African village had it's singers, it's dancers, and music makers. This ceremonial singing was associated with birth, initiation, marriage, healing, and going to war, and death. They sang of the historical events of their people and their kings, and in most fulsome adulation. A special kind of music was used in victory celebrations, after war or after a successful hunt. And when African kings visited other kings, the music part of the celebration was glorious. There were parades wherein drummers toss their drums into the air and caught them, never losing a step or a beat. It is most interesting to note, even in this country, and throughout the world, that when kings and heads of state visit each other, there is a review of the military with spirited music. A note college and university bands were the major reps and their batons swinging and swirling all for celebrated occasion. Etta Moten Barn...: I'm not trying to say to you that West Africa gave to the world this type of ritual, because music is the universal language of all peoples and of all times. But I want to say to you that the civilizations of West Africa had a high regard for singing and dancing. Making music or celebrated occasions as they had as high regard for that as did the Greeks in diverse, speaking choruses, accompanied by the music of the lire or the Romans, less musically inclined, in their trumpets and flourishes, to denote the heroic events of their warriors and occasions of state. The major instrument of Africans was, and is, the drum. That's the major instrument. Every writer and every trader recorded that there were always numerous drums and various sizes and shapes. I have had the pleasure of seeing the drums of the Ashanti, the drums in the... All sizes of drums. And my husband and I drove through this with a guide. We were guests of this paramount chief. And when we drove through his compound, which is a very big compound, not as big as your campus, but big compound. Etta Moten Barn...: And we heard drums, and we asked the driver, "What were those drums?" He said, "Those are the talking drums." And I said, "Well, what are they saying?" "They're saying that there is... they're talking about you. They're talking about there's a visitor. They talk about his wife. And they're talking about himself talking about the fact that they are out here visiting our king." They understood. How, I don't know, but the talking drums are understood by Africans. And these were celebrating a visitor. This is tradition. This was not too long ago as time goes. About 10 years. But if we say back, it wasn't just when the slaves came up, but it is now that this type thing is happening. Some of these drums were made from hollow logs with dried sheepskin over the opening. Others were made from the gourd or the calabash by cutting it in half and drawing a skin tightly over the opening. Drums ranged from as small as 12 inches to as large as seven feet in diameter. Two or more drums were played together. Each producing different rhythms and different effects and tones. Etta Moten Barn...: They had instruments resembling pianos, flutes, and lutes, and so forth. Then they had a gourd filled with seeds, with beads and cowrie shells on the outside, that they would shake to make rhythm. They call them shakers, but I'm sure there is an African name. But for my benefit, they said it's a shaker. But they are marvelous. And they keep great rhythm. And to hear an African band made up of those real African instruments is quite something to hear. They perform they're music in poetic forms, and their songs accompany their daily work, always with a refrain while a person, some other person, one person, took the lead. We still see this kind of work song reflected in the slave period on American soil. The West Africans were engaged in antiphonal singing hundreds of years before they came to this land. I refer here to that form of music known as the call and the response. The leader used it to call the villagers together and to locate each other. Etta Moten Barn...: For example, I told the students last night, the soul, Voices of Soul, they allowed me to sit in on their rehearsal last night. I was telling them about being in Togoland with this call and response thing. And the way they... These people, who speak only the Twi language, T-W-I, Twi language, and Ewe, E-W-E, the Ewe language. Both of those. The Ewes are the singers, as you know, of West Africa. They're the musicians. They are the singers. There are those who are, all of them are drummers, most of them, but there are singers whose voices sound better than most African singers. And so they were in a choir rehearsal at this time. I went into this cathedral and the women were there with babies on their backs, as even the young ladies who were there last night with little babies singing and doing this soul singing last night. The dedication to music was showed last night, too, even as it was there that day in this African church. Etta Moten Barn...: So when they were talking about the fact that here was this visitor, the lady is a singer from America and the man is a journalist and so forth and so. So they said, "Well, if she's a singer, let her sing for us." So I was singing in those days. I don't sing now. And I told the children last night, I'm retired. And if I start to sing, you would think I was tired, but it's retired. But just to give you an example of the call and the answer type of thing. I said to them, "All right, I will sing. If when I sing, you answer." The man had to translate that into English to them. They did not speak my language, but they knew this tune. And they answered me in their language. And I'm going to take a chance on getting an answer from you because I said, ♪ (singing) Swing low, sweet chariot... Audience: ♪ Coming for to carry me home... Etta Moten Barn...: ♪ O, Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home. ♪♪ Etta Moten Barn...: Well, anyway, that's the way it went. But that is your call and the answer. That's antiphonal singing. They were doing it long, long time ago in Africa. As I said, I'm not saying that Africans are the only ones who do it, but they were the only ones I know who were doing it. And books relating to early slave music during the colonial period, say 1607 and 1774, or the era of nationhood, 1776 to 1860, are not in existence. Very, very few are. If any, I haven't found any. Etta Moten Barn...: We are forced to rely upon early Afro-American music as seen through the eyes of American travelers in the South, and through the ears of those people who sang them and handed them down. I know there were many. As a preacher's daughter in the South of the United States, I know there were many, many songs that were just handed down from congregation to congregation. There were men who went about and James Weldon Johnson wrote about. The O... What about, O something, the O Unknown Black and Unknown Bards. These Black and unknown bards were the ones who passed along a lot of our folk lore in music, because they would go and they had these printed little... Etta Moten Barn...: There was a time, you don't know this but I do, when you didn't play in church. You didn't have any instrument in church. You sang either by tapping like this, or tapping your feet and sing your song like this. And no Negro spiritual was ever, when I was a child, played on with an instrument, you see. And many of the church songs were tapped out. Just, as we got through singing Swing Low, they would sing the gospel type song too or the jubilee, we call them. The gospel is new. But it was all... It's comparatively new. But these jubilee songs, we called them then, you did it by tapping your foot, and this kind of intricate rhythm, and sometimes get more intricate than that when there's several of them. It's fantastic, really. But this kind of thing was handed down. And this is a way the folk music, the music of these people, of these folk, got around. They would make up something of your own experience. The Christians conversion. Etta Moten Barn...: ♪ (singing) I've found, at last a Savior of whom I've often heard. And I have the precious favor, He has promised in His words. Oh, the joy that comes to me by the power that makes me free. My soul is filled with pleasure, tis the year of jubilee. ♪♪ Etta Moten Barn...: And you go on and on and on... Etta Moten Barn...: You just tell the whole experience of your conversion. And so you make this song up so you write those words down. Usually you have it printed. And then if you my father, you have your little girl that I'll go around and sell them for 10, 15 cents a piece. That pay your way to the next place. So this is the way those Black and unknown bards worked. That's the way they did. And this is the way these songs were passed on. You would add your experience to this. So when you would have your ballads... I don't know whether they're ballads or ballads, but we would pronounce it ballads. But I think it's ballad. B-A-L-L-A-D. The ballad. Because that is the poem and the song and so and so and so but this is the way it was done. This is the reason when you were doing your research you can't find very much because this is the way it is. This stuff was handed down mouth to mouth. Thank goodness now that we have these things here. The recording machines and the tape recorders, so that you can catch this stuff. Etta Moten Barn...: And [inaudible] is doing a marvelous collection of this type of stuff and her own thoughts and her own points, as well as other peoples, which are preserved. Many people are doing this now. And it's when you research now, the people you are teaching, Mr. Musician, will have an easier time. Because when I came along, there's nobody but choir who had written anything about the Afro-American song. I was doing my thesis on the Afro-American song. Couldn't find in all of the libraries around Kansas city, Missouri, University of Kansas, anything on the Afro-American soul. Except in the preface with credible and the preface of James Weldon Johnson's Songs that he had written some about. Now, with these things being recorded and people writing about them, Eileen Southern and etc. And the things you are going to write, and the things that are being written, it's much easier now to have a record of these, and we don't have to depend upon this. But that other material is very, very, very, very rich. Very rich, very rich. Etta Moten Barn...: And then some observers began to record what they heard in European notations and errors were often. Errors were often made. These observers had no phonographs, no recording instruments, and ballad, the privilege of hearing the song the second time. They had to catch the tune on the first go round. Had they heard the same song several times as I did, they would have noted that in folk songs related to religious work, the dance, that folk music is sung in many, many ways. Often folk songs are sung differently within the same locality. And often the same thing occurs in different geographical regions. For example, you remember the Martin Luther King, We Shall Overcome. I learned that two or three different ways, and we never sang it like they finally sang it. Etta Moten Barn...: ♪ (singing) We shall overcome... ♪♪ Etta Moten Barn...: And for the way I learned it, ♪ (singing) I'll overcome, we've overcome, I've overcome someday. Oh, if in my heart, I do believe. I'll overcome someday. ♪♪ Etta Moten Barn...: That's the way I learned it. That's the way I learned it. Etta Moten Barn...: But the other way, it got to be the swing thing. I mean the sway. Which bears out what I'm saying here, that you can learn the same thing in different ways. Even in one locale. The slave song composer. Now, slaves used music for such few ceremonies as they were permitted to engage in. I told you about the Africans using them for different occasions, the dance, and the court jester, and for different celebrations. But the slaves had a few occasions they could use it. Music and words of their own making in their head. And they had them to be fit for whatever occasion it was, just like their ancestors have done. And some writers portray only the religious songs, but Eileen Southern holds that the song types were rarely of a religious nature in the early days. Though, the religious nature was later to implant itself. Etta Moten Barn...: Now I... That may be true, she's an authority and I'm not, but, well anyway. But other writers and narrators saw slave songs as forms of minstrel set. Now that's when people got them who didn't originate them, if you know what I mean? These songs were sung by stevedores at work, people in the cotton fields, normally with one man taking the lead line, and other workers striking up the refrain. It's rarely possible to identify the author of a folk song and to pinpoint its original form. Folk songs are created by nonprofessional musicians, are performed by the common people, and are passed along from one generation to another by oral transmission. Etta Moten Barn...: In the process of transmission, the music is adapted to the taste of both those who sing it and those who listen. The changes that take place become part of the music. And inevitably, the music takes on a different form than it originally had over a span of years, and author's names are forgotten. There were three choices available to the slave composer who wished to create a new song. Consciously or unconsciously, the composer would one, improvise upon a song already in existence. Two, he would combine the materials from several old songs and make a new one. Or three, he would just compose a song entirely of new materials. Etta Moten Barn...: The African tradition favored the first, that is improvised upon the song already in existence. In fact, that improvisation is so strong a factor in this tradition that changes are introduced into songs with each new performance. Above all, music in the African tradition was functional. Consequently, the melody of a song often served chiefly as a vehicle for the text and was constantly adjusted to fit even as a singer extemporized from one verse to the next. Now you know the song I sang first to you just now, telling you about the experience of the Christian, I have found ... Now that really is on the tune of Annie Laurie. That is on that tune. If you'd sing that tune along with me as I sing that other song, that's one of the forms of composing a song, the song that you want to tell your story on, the melody on which you want to tell your story. Etta Moten Barn...: Slave music in the United States was squarely in the African tradition with respect to improvisations. All the evidence indicated that a large number of the slave songs represented variations on a theme. That is the song seemed to have been altered versions of some very old songs. No doubt many of the songs, the social songs in particular, were brought over from Africa and passed down from parents to children. Some of those tunes were. Now, Paul Robeson told me back in 1929, he came to University of Kansas when I was there. I went to him, this great singer. He's not much older than I am. But anyway, I was there at school, having gone back after I was grown. I don't want to misrepresent myself because I have been here a very long time. Etta Moten Barn...: But anyway, Paul said, when he spoke to me about this singing that I was doing, that the songs of the African people, the Afro-Americans, were out of their own hearts and were particularly the words, out of their own experiences. And that you cannot say, and I've certainly asked him well, didn't he believe this, because I was writing my thesis at the time, that we do say that they are strictly because of this phenomenon, the American experience. Here, they came out of those experiences. Now, but he did say that there was a tune that had come from Africa, that he was quite certain, that Go Down Moses was an African war chant. Now that he had said this. Etta Moten Barn...: So that these scholars who say that some of the songs that we have, the slave songs of the Afro-American were brought from Africa, the tunes might have been, as Paul had said about this particular one. But the words and the feeling, the spirit that had come from these hearts of these oppressed people. Almost every contemporary bibliographical source contains references to slaves born in Africa who helped to keep the African traditions alive in their communities during the 1700s and 1800s. And the continuous influx of new slaves helped to revive traditions that were in danger of dying out, whether the newcomers came from Africa, the West Indies, or other states, or another state within the United States. Thus, it has been possible for researchers to find a number of direct parallels between African melodies and slave tunes. And further research may really reveal more. Etta Moten Barn...: The second option available ... Now that's making it up on a theme, an original theme. The second option available, as the folk song composers, was that of combining materials from several old songs to make a new one. This accounted for a considerable number of spiritual texts as distinguished from the social songs, except that the songs utilized the lines from the scriptures and Protestant hymns. For the sacred verses, the slaves use their own verses, refrains, and choruses, and made up complete songs. Etta Moten Barn...: And the third option made an entirely new song. Now, the style of the work song, that's still another kind of a song, was related to the activity performed and was designed to accompany it. Oh, there were different types of work songs and different songs, oh, that some of them in Georgia on the Georgia Chain Gang and some about Molly was a good gal and a bad gal too. And oh, Molly [inaudible], and that sort of thing. Then there was the famous song that Paul Robeson made famous. And that was Water Boy. That call for the water boy to come when they were working on the railroad down in the South. I've always imagined it's Georgia. Etta Moten Barn...: You know, that ♪ (singing) Water boy... ♪♪. Etta Moten Barn...: You know that. This kind of a work song, which had been written down and used as almost an art song, because it was written and printed and published, but it was a work song which had come out of an occasion. Etta Moten Barn...: Then there were dance songs and play songs. And one of the dance and play songs was dance, Juba dance. The Juba. And then there is that kind of a dance. It was a kind of a shuffle dance. I've seen the Juba danced. It was so nice to have lived long. But anyway, I wish I could show you the Juba dance. I can't show it to you. I don't know it. But I saw some of it in Africa, though. It's similar to the kind of shuffle push kind of a thing, that, and half beating of the ground with your feet to make a marvelous, something like the Highlife, you who have been to Africa. It's very much like the Highlife of Africa. Etta Moten Barn...: And then there was spirituals, which were said to be taken from the regular hymnal. Incidentally, these Methodist hymns were in print a long, long, long time ago. Dr. Isaac Watts, the hymnologist. And the Wesleys who wrote in England. And Richard Allen of AME Church had a hymnal around 1801. And that showed clearly that the Watts, that hymnologist whose name was Watts, contributed to the Afro-American hymn, which the Afro-American singer and the Afro-American hymnologist lifted over, and the tune, but fitted his own version of the scripture verses to that particular tune. Etta Moten Barn...: For example, when Watts wrote, "When I can read my title clear to mansions in the sky, I bid farewell to every fear and wipe my weeping eye. Should earth again my soul engage and hellish darts be hurled, then I can smile at Satan's rage and face a frowning world. Let care, like wild deluge, come, and storms of sorrow fall. May I but safely reach my home, my God, my heaven, and my all." And then there came this spiritual. "And then I shall bathe my weary soul in seas of heavenly rest and not a wave of trouble roll across my peaceful breast." This hymn perhaps, not necessarily, became the source of several Negro spirituals. Etta Moten Barn...: And we'd hear the basic concept. For example, "Do you know the one in bright mansions above, in bright mansions above? Lord, I want to be up yonder in bright mansions above." Which comes over from the scriptures. And, "My Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall." All those, there are Methodist hymns that have these particular song verses in their texts, but we have taken them over and made them even more visual, there's more imagery in them. "My Lord, whether you hear the trumpet sound to wake the nations underground, look into my God's right hand when the stars begin to fall." There's a vivid imagination of the folk composer. And it seizes upon the significance of these awful, awesome events that will take place in the judgment day. Etta Moten Barn...: "And my Lord, what a ..." And then he proceeds to enumerate the different events using, for the most part, the same phrases as in the Methodist hymn. That, however, is an entirely new song with new music and new form. And then there's another one about judgment day. "In that great getting up morning, fare thee well, fare thee well. In that great getting up morning, fare thee well, fare thee well." Then they will go on with a conversation with Gabriel. And all of these imageries, these imaginary things about the judgment day, all of that traditional folk lore shown through our music. Etta Moten Barn...: Same way with the poetic language that's used in many of the themes of the spirituals. And then the improvisation, we've talked about that. And I want to make it painstakingly clear that the Afro-American artists must know Afro-American music, but also he must know the music and folklore of the peoples of other regions and countries. Now I'm talking about the concertizer, I'm talking about the people who make music, I'm talking about musicians. You have to sing your German, Italian, French, Spanish, and stuff if he or she is to be regarded as a universal artist and as a graduate of the University of Kansas School of Fine Arts with a major in voice and having heavily concertized on four continents, United States and Europe and Africa, he told you all about that. Etta Moten Barn...: But I want you to know that I have never, when I was singing concerts, failed to end my concerts with groups, with two groups. One, and all of them by American composers and one Negro spiritual, and one, the art songs of the Afro-American. Which many people didn't know there was any thing such as an art song by an Afro-American composer, but there are such things. Then there are those people, those organizations, who are the perpetuators of the Afro-American folk music. They are the groups of singers, the choirs like the Fisk Singers who perpetuated the spirituals. The Tuskegee Choir, which had spirituals as well as the art songs of the Black composers. Etta Moten Barn...: The ragtime, the orchestras, the pianist, the composers like [inaudible], Scott Joplin. Those people who are just now being recognized as great have been great all the while because they too have been perpetuating the folklore in music. The ragtime, the blues, the jazz, and the spiritual, the religious song, the jubilee song, and now the gospel song that we call. Such choruses as the Voices of Soul are the ones who perpetuate folklore in music. The method of speaking of your religious experiences through song, that is the gospel song. That is one way. A sermon in song. The blues has a special song form. Etta Moten Barn...: Well, I heard the musician in residence that I was introduced today speaking, giving an assignment today, said, "Next time, we've talked about jazz, next time, we're going to talk about the blues." The blues. There's only a hair's breadth between the blues and the spiritual. It's all in what you're thinking about when you say ... Leave it there, leave it. It keeps dropping. But really, because the ... And then, of course, there is a special form to do the blues. There's a structure. First, there is a, let me see, well, you said it generally has three stanzas. And then the first two lines are repetition of the third line and so forth. So the contrast, the statement. But I can reduce it to simple terms like this. The first line states the case. You see? And the second line repeats the case. It just restates the case. And the third lines tells the result of the case. You see. Etta Moten Barn...: Now, the man loses his sweetheart, you see. The girl loses the man. And I woke up this morning feeling blue, feeling sad and blue. That's the case. I woke up this morning feeling sad and blue. Then you restate the case, I woke up this morning feeling sad and blue. You see? And why? Because I ain't got nobody to tell my troubles to. You see? Now see, if we had time, you can go around this room and just state a case and restate the case and then somebody else can give the result as they would suit. You say, "I'm going to the river to carry me a rocking chair. I've going to the river and carrying me a rocking chair. If the blues overtake me, I'm going to rock on away from here." This is the form of the blues. And it can voice anything that anybody feels, you see. And anybody can compose the blues. Etta Moten Barn...: The fusion of the blues and ragtime with brass bands and syncopated dancers other than music called jazz. Jazz has developed its own characteristics. And you are going to study that. So you go to the artist and residents and talk about jazz. But I tell you, the thing that I know most about and the thing that I've experienced over three years of that had a lot of folklore in it. Now I have a friend who says, "Now just why would this particular Jewish composer have the right or the authority or the experience enough to preserve folklore in music?" Well, I think that it is highly possible for anybody of any group to, if you have experienced it, if you have experienced, I mean, talking to the people who have experienced it. Etta Moten Barn...: Now, Gershwin went to South Carolina and lived in Charleston with the people who had known Porgy. Porgy really did live. I'm talking about Porgy and Bess now. As a folk opera, it is the American folk opera. Treemonisha is not a folk opera. Treemonisha is by a Black man, but Treemonisha is an opera, period. But Porgy and Bess is a folk opera because it is of a folk, it has a lot of the traditional folklore in it that was not composed by him. He set the music to it, but he got it from the people. Etta Moten Barn...: For example, I was the second Bess. Anne Brown was, well, Anne Brown of Baltimore was the first original Bess in 1935 when the folk opera was launched. In 1942, when night with Porgy and Bess was revived, I was the Bess. And for this opera, there was a Broadway and a traveling group, which I was with. On Broadway for a year. Somebody bowing his head back there. You mustn't do that. You show how old you are. Did you see it? Oh, did you really? Ah, yes. Were you in the Army? Were you out at the Army? We went out there and played too. Ah, yes, yes, yes. Right. You came up from Missouri to see me. Well, anyway. Etta Moten Barn...: I mean from up to Jefferson City. Porgy and Bess was, as I said, played all over this country for three years. So you're hearing these things every night and sometimes twice on Saturdays and Sundays. With the mind that you've got, you're thinking about these folk things, which are in there, folk sings, folk customs, and so many of them are in there. Let's see, where was I? Oh, Porgy and Bess was a folk opera, and everyone hears of opera, but that was a folk opera. What was it, and why a folk opera? Etta Moten Barn...: The scene was laid in Charleston. The reason it was a folk opera is because Gershwin, as a young man, and I knew him as a young man ... He died as a young man, but before he died, when he was casting this thing, I went to his apartment. He heard me sing. I am a contralto, got no business singing soprano, but I wanted the part. Let's face it. But it was too high. He had already written it. He said, "But you are Bess. You look like Bess. You have the temperament of Bess. Now, I have a girl who can sing it, and she has a soprano voice, but her skin is fair. She's not like the Bess that they painted and told me about in Charleston." Etta Moten Barn...: You see Porgy had already been a play going to play by DuBose Heyward. Then, when he went to live in Charleston, he found that Porgy had a girlfriend. Her name was Bess, and he learned all about ... Then, of course, he had Dubose Heyward to add Bess into the story of Porgy and Bess. He had always wanted to write the great American opera. He wanted to be a serious writer. The first thing serious he did was Rhapsody in Blue, as you know, you pianists know. Etta Moten Barn...: Then, he wrote this opera and, of course, I told him, "It's a good opera as operas go, but you're the first man that never did give the leading lady a solo, an aria to sing. Bess always sings with somebody else. She does the reprise on Summertime, and she sings a duet with Crown. She sings a duet with Sportin' Life, duet with Porgy, no aria for Bess. Not only that," I said, "You got it too high. We are not bad in soprano. We're bad in contralto." But he said, "No, it's operatic, and it's theatrical, so it has to be high." Etta Moten Barn...: Anyway, finally, when Anne Brown, after six months decided she was tired of the whole thing and went on off to Norway and married herself a Norwegian, they didn't have anybody to do Bess. So they came and got me and did some transpositions. They transposed it a little lower when I couldn't hardly make it. So anyway, I did it for three years. But you remember the story, I hope, that he's saying how old he is when he says he saw me, but that's all right. Etta Moten Barn...: The scene was laid in Charleston, South Carolina, on the street, an area known as Catfish Row. There is a housing project there now. But anyway, Porgy is the town's cripple, having lost both of his lower limbs, and was known and loved by all the races. He was the pets of the white folks and the Negroes and all like that. Here in Charleston, Black men went to the sea to earn their living by fishing, commercial fishing. Often, storms and the havoc of nature never permitted the total number to come back, those who went to sea. Etta Moten Barn...: Now, the story was around this type thing. A woman was made widowed by her husband's not coming back. Then, there was Sportin' Life, who was associated with good times, and Crown was connected with, well, with good times and Sportin' Life was connected with dope. Bess, the local belle, was considered Crown's woman. There comes a fight, and Crown, accused of murder, flees to the swamp island off the coast of Charleston, [Kiawah Island]. Everyone frowns on Bess, and she's regarded as a loose woman. When she tries to find comfort while Crown is away, she's ignored. She knocks on door after door. I mean, while Porgy is away. Finally, she knocks on Porgy's door, and he lets her in. That's right. It was Crown had gone away. Now, she's declared Porgy's woman. Then, Crown sneaks back into town and carries Bess to swamp island from which she is later rescued. She has contracted a terrible fever, yet Porgy takes her back and watches over her vigilantly. As events go, Crown is killed and guilt is pointed at Porgy. Etta Moten Barn...: But do you remember what I'm saying? Let me tell you about this. One time, when Bess comes back from the island, she's in the back waiting to come on stage, the real Bess. You always stand back there, and Crown's off stage, so you're back there. When you travel, you go to getting friendly with different people. So Crown and I were back here, and Porgy is out on stage. He's singing, "Oh Lord, don't let Bess die," and so forth and so on. Then, of course, Bess is supposed to be in the house. She comes out with the gown on because she's been sick, and she says, "Uh." He says, "Oh, Bess, thank God you're here." He said, "You've been sick with the fever," and so on. He says, "I know you've been with Crown," and she says, "How you know?" Etta Moten Barn...: That's what she's supposed to do. So, here I am back here, this night, and you're back here, you're standing. Crown generally sat on a box, and so you stand here. We were talking trash. So when the time comes to enter, I come out and he says, "I know you've been with Crown." I said, "How you know?" I'm telling you, for weeks, when we got to this point, I couldn't go on. Etta Moten Barn...: So let me get back to this now. I just happened to think about that. But anyway, then when Porgy is carried off, I wanted to show you some of the folklore that was in Porgy and Bess. Porgy comes back, finally, and seeks her. Bess has fled with Sportin' Life and so forth and so on, and this is a hard blow for Porgy to accept, In the Catfish Row, they have no knowledge of New York City is, and Porgy asks, "Where New York?" It says that "She's gone to New York, Porgy." He said, "Where New York?" They said, "Way up past the custom house." Etta Moten Barn...: The custom house is, at that point in Charleston, on the Ashley River, and Porgy is seen getting on his cart, going to go ride the go-cart up to New York. But here's what makes this a folk opera with the folklore in it. The media of Catfish Row is revealed in the lives of plain people. You see? Fishing is a way of life. Sorrow and death are often the result of this fishing life, and the custom house a mile or two away is the farthest point beyond Catfish Row, which these people know. Etta Moten Barn...: Then, there is a saucer of burial. This man gets killed, and then they have the saucer on the chest of the corpse, and everybody comes in and puts in a nickel or a dime to help with the funeral. The saucer burial was common among the poor. It was a common custom. It was a folklore of the people, of not only there, in Texas, you'd put this, and not only there, in Africa. There was a wedding, and they put the cloths down. You are supposed to put ... Even, I went to a wedding where the people were well to do, but the custom of putting your cloth down and putting a gift on it or money on it, and they say that's to help the family with the wedding. The same way with this funeral thing, the saucer burial, it's the tradition of collecting money in the saucer to defray the cost of burying poor people. Etta Moten Barn...: The vendors and their cries, you remember the strawberry woman and then the crawfish, crawdad man. Bess, though very ill, cannot be taken to the hospital. You remember? He said, "Oh God, don't let them take Bess to the hospital," because they believed that all people taken to the hospital would die. That's a legend of that area. Most of the time they do. But anyway, then they had these picnics that preceded by parades and the folk song was with that. Then this "Gone, gone, gone," the chant up there in the upper room there, the mourning song, that's a folk way. Etta Moten Barn...: Sportin' Life sings several numbers, but the hit song was, It Ain't Necessarily So. It deals with the Bible tales such as Jonah and the whale, and is one composed just as the Negro spirituals were in the days of yore, linking up the selections that one chooses. Then, another was Porgy's refusal to look at or identify the man he killed. The reason, if one who kills and looks on the dead person, the dead body is supposed to start bleeding if the guilty man looks at it. That's a folk superstition. Porgy says this, "Oh, don't let me look on Crown's face. I can't look on Crown's face. If I look on that dead man's face, the body begins to bleed." That is a superstition. Etta Moten Barn...: The rousing finale of Porgy leaves for New York, Oh Lord, I'm on My Way, that was a Negro spiritual. Now, that was composed, spiritual, for that occasion. All of the items listed here are entwined in Porgy and Bess. These legends, traditions, beliefs, customs, and folk ways combine the folklore of the people of an area, and the Porgy and Bess is but the vehicle through which this folklore is portrayed. I use that because I know most about it, and I think it probably holds more of the folk ways and the folklore of the Afro-American in one piece of music than any I have found. Because I know about this is why I presented it to you. As Bess of Porgy and Bess, I had a good chance to study the folklore in that type of Afro-American music. You can take it from there. Thank you. Fred Woodard: I'm sure that if there are questions, Ms. Barnett will entertain questions at this time. Speaker 8: I don't want to ask a question. I'm wondering if you can sing one more time. Etta Moten Barn...: Oh, no. I tell you, I told the children last night, I am retired from singing. If I really sang, you would think I was crying, rather than [inaudible 00:01:13:10]. No, I think too much of the art of singing to do it badly, and I wouldn't be singing very well now. Thank you for wanting. I would if I could, but you wouldn't like it if you heard me. Remember me, as you did in St. Louis. I think it would be better for you to remember that. Speaker 8: I wasn't there. Speaker 9: Well, there's so many questions to ask, but let me ask, [inaudible]. You said Porgy and Bess is folk-based, but some of the music, and I listened to the music for a long time cut off from the opera, I've heard it played and sang by various people, as music, the lyrics sound actually very sophisticated. Etta Moten Barn...: They are. Speaker 9: He made them necessarily so. Etta Moten Barn...: Yes. Speaker 9: It is a sort of [inaudible] skepticism. Etta Moten Barn...: Yes, it is. Speaker 9: I wonder if you think it just has many dimensions or- Etta Moten Barn...: It does have many dimensions. It is a sophisticated thing, but the idea of it, the opera itself is an operatic form, but with the folk it's through the music. You see? I'm not saying it's African music. It's not Afro-American music, but the text is what I'm talking about. It's the folklore that is in this opera that is shown through that particular music. Now, for example, the Juba dance has just the form, somewhat, of the dance itself, but Nathaniel Dett really made a piano piece out of it, you see. Etta Moten Barn...: As a matter of truth, how easy is it? I mean how easy is it, anyway, to distinguish the nationality of music, music, notes themselves? Not always too easy. You can tell oriental music form, but as to Black music, I wonder about this. They'll use certain things that are like a Jewish chant in there, too. But there's certain things like a Jewish chant in some of the things that we know as Negro music, Afro-American music. So I think, when I say that it's a folk opera, I think these folk things that I mentioned to you was what I mean by folk opera. The music itself, I didn't mean that as much as I meant what it says. Speaker 8: Can I just extend this question on Gershwin? Etta Moten Barn...: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Speaker 8: Do you think Gershwin was a genuine composer of blues, or does Gershwin represent a peculiar tension in American society and aspiration towards Europe, but a recognition that American music is really African-based? Gershwin was always trying to be a great composer, but the greatness for me lies in the blues elements that come in. Do you think this was a tension, and did he resolve it? It's a very interesting question. Etta Moten Barn...: It is an interesting question. To me that which sounds to you like blues, is both [inaudible] and African. He's a Jew. He was a religious Jew. I think that ... Now, this is all opinion and yours is an opinion. I agree with you in that I feel that the tensions he felt, if there were some tensions, and there were as a Jew because they were similar to those of the Afro-American, and if it came out in his music, it was almost to be expected because their intervals, many of the Hebraic chants, are very much African and Afro-American chants. Now, I think we're together, but I think you leave out his ethnicity, and I think that comes into his music, too. I really think so, his Jewish experience plus his borrowed vicarious African experience, Afro-American experience. I think that, you know what I mean? You know what I mean? Oh, I thought you were disagreeing with that. Speaker 10: No, Etta Moten Barn...: You, baby. Speaker 10: No, no, not me. Etta Moten Barn...: That's my opinion now. It's not really yours, but I think that he felt ... As [Fabio] said today, it's the music, the Afro-American music being sifted through his experience, too, which comes out very much like the blues. They got that from me, too. Speaker 9: Can I, just one moment, there was an Indian writer here, or there was on the program last time, and he gave us a talk on Marathi poetry and then played us Marathi poetry in the original and in translation. The writers were all amazed when the Marathi poet translated a Marathi song that he had written into English, and sang it to a blues form. The poet considered the most appropriate translation in music for his thing to be the blues. So, that fits in with this. Etta Moten Barn...: It does. He's sifting it through his own experience. Speaker 9: Yes.