MUSIC

Songs of Emancipation and Slavery

A chat with Matt Callahan

By G.M. Burns

The past has a voice in the present, and Matt Callahan seemed determined to produce the Songs of Slavery and Emancipation. e new release has 16 songs about the burden of slavery, and there are 15 songs of Emancipation, which give voice to hope and the struggle for freedom.

According to the label, Jalopy Records, Callahan shares “recently discovered songs composed by enslaved people explicitly calling for resistance to slavery, some originating as early as 1784 and others as late as the Civil War.” And in the recording of this music, many musicians from New Orleans, New York, to Amherst, Massachusetts and Bern, Switzerland, were involved in the singing on this CD. e music in the collection is moving, such as the lyrics from the track “ e Negro’s Complaint,” “When stole and brought from Africa, Transported to America, Like the brute beasts in market sold, To stand the whip and the cold. To stand the lash and feel the pain, Expos’d to stormy snow and rain. To work all day and half the night, And rise before the morning light!...” e booklet also includes historical photos of the music sheets of that era.

Callahan tells how he discovered some of the music, and also shares how other people and institutions were instrumental in this historical collection of music, which re ects on the strength of a people and their will to move forward.

Ithaca Times: ere was a great deal of work completed to produce this new CD. Talk about how you discovered the slavery and emancipation songs for this historical release?

Mat Callahan: I discovered a pamphlet in an antiquarian bookshop that contained the lyrics to a song said to have been composed and sung by slaves preparing an insurrection. is took place in 1813 in South Carolina. e lyrics were unlike any I’d heard associated with Negro Spirituals, work songs or for that matter, any vernacular Black music emerging from the days of slavery. e lyrics were explicitly revolutionary and anthemic in style. is captured my attention as did the pamphlet itself: Negro Slave Revolts in the United States: 1526-1860. e pamphlet was old and battered by much use. It was published in 1939. I found it in 2015. e combination of the pamphlet’s title and the lyrics to this song raised important questions, the rst being the subject of slave revolts. Most Americans have heard of Nat Turner and certainly John Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid. Many may recall the lm Amistad about that particular revolt. Perhaps more Black Americans know a few other famous names: Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey and some others. But overall, the impression most Americans have is that the slaves did not rebel. In fact, recent histories that claim to be telling the true story of slavery reassert that claim. Yet, here was clear, documentary evidence of literally hundreds of revolts, spanning the entire duration of slavery in North America up to the Civil War, and these were continuous, indeed an ever-threatening presence. is then led to the next question: why would there not be songs corresponding to the revolts. Songs commemorating rebel heroes, calling for unity, raising the battlecry of emancipation? For a people so deeply musical as African Americans it seemed strange that there were not more, many more, songs such as the one I found in this pamphlet. At that time, I had recently completed another historicalmusical project about James Connolly, the Irish socialist revolutionary executed by the British for his role in the Easter Rising, and it is widely known how Irish rebel songs kept the ame burning for hundreds of years of British imperial rule. Where were the equivalent slave songs? is is how the search began and it led to many more discoveries than just the songs I found.

IT: What are the ways African American slaves and free people used song and music in their lives?

MC: Music has always been a means of community-forming. Music gives expression to the su ering, struggling and rejoicing which are basic to the human condition. People in bondage had all the more reason to use music this way. Considering that slaves were deprived of almost all material possessions, it is not surprising that they would use those

Continued on Page 15

Walk-ins welcome for glasses or bottles of wine or local beers Reservations recommended for tastings Sunset music series each Thursday resumes May 19 6-8 pm

Hours Starting May 1: Every Day 10 a.m.-6 p.m. 607-272-WINE (9463) www.SixMileCreek.com 3.5 miles East of The Commons, 1551 Slaterville Road (Rt. 79)