The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History through Songs, Sermons, and Speech

With no recordings of slave songs and narratives, the authors have undertaken the difficult task of bringing to contemporary readers (and listeners, via the CD that accompanies the book) the sounds of American slave culture. The impressive work songs, spirituals, and prayers were compiled from tracks recorded in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration. Drawing on WPA interviews with former slaves, slave narratives, and other historical documents from the 1700s through the 1850s, the authors provide the context for the field calls, work songs, sermons, and other sounds and utterances of slaves on American plantations. The authors also focus on recollections of the wails of slaves being whipped, the barking of hounds hunting down runaways, and the keening of women losing their children to the slave block.... The Whites, history professors who are unrelated, also explore the sounds of slavery within the broader scope of American music and speech, forever influenced by the contributions of African Americans [Graham_White__Shane_White]_The_Sounds_of_Slavery_bookos-z1.org_

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