O - o - o - h, L - a - a - w-d, Shot my pis-tol
in de heart o-town,......... Lawd, de big Chief holled, “Don’t you blow me down.”
CHAPTER XV
TYPES OF PHONO-PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORDS OF NEGRO SINGERS
We have referred often in these pages to the wealth of material found in the great variety and number of the Negro’s songs. We have appraised the collections which have been published and those which are to come as valuable source material for the study of folk life and art and especially for their value in the portrayal of representative Negro life. Adequate analysis and presentation of these values will be possible only after a number of the other collections have been completed and comprehensive studies made.
There are other values not yet presented. For example, the scientific study of the Negro’s musical ability has barely begun, but it promises much. The work of Professor Carl E. Seashore and others has resulted in the formulation of various tests and methods for studying musical talent and singing ability. Many valuable studies have been reported from various psychological laboratories. One of the latest developments in this field is the phono-photographic method of recording voices. In this method the phono-photographic machine makes it possible to take pictures of sound waves of all kinds. Among other things, it registers the most delicate variations in pitch, variations which are often too subtle for the human ear to perceive. In short, it gives a picture of exactly what a voice or a musical instrument does.
Naturally this method of sound wave analysis may be of untold value in the study of the human voice. It enables the singer to see his voice in detail. It furnishes the scientist with data for the study of the qualities which make a voice good or poor. It opens up many possibilities, both practical and theoretical, as a method of voice analysis.
Of special interest and importance is the application of this method to the study of Negro singers and Negro voices. It was therefore a fortunate turn of circumstances which made it possible for the authors of this volume to join Professor Seashore and Dr. Milton Metfessel of the University of Iowa in making extensive phono-photographic studies of various Negro singers during the fall of 1925, with headquarters at the University of North Carolina Institute for Research in Social Science. Professor Seashore was able to coöperate personally in the work at Hampton, while Dr. Metfessel remained throughout the entire period of the study.[98]
[98] Dr. Metfessel, using the perfected machine which long years of work at the University of Iowa psychological laboratories have produced, was successful in obtaining a large number of satisfactory records. He also took moving pictures of the singers. Needless to say, we are indebted to him for the material of this chapter.
Among the types of Negro singers whose voices were subjected to the phono-photographic process were practically all of the common types which we have been recording in the pages of this volume and of The Negro and His Songs. There were the typical laborers, working with pick and shovel. There was the lonely singer, with his morning yodel or “holler.” There were the skilled workers with voices more or less trained by practice and formal singing. There was the more nearly primitive type, swaying body and limb with singing. The noted quartet from Hampton Institute, as well as individual singers there, coöperated. Men and women from the North Carolina College for Negroes represented other types. Quartets and individuals from the high schools at Chapel Hill and Raleigh, North Carolina, were still other types. Finally the voices of one hundred and fifty Negro children from the Orange County Training School at Chapel Hill and the Washington School at Raleigh were recorded. Types of songs included in the experiments were the gang work song, the pick-and-shovel song and various other work songs, the yodel, the “1926 model laugh,” the blues, formal quartet music, spirituals, and children’s songs. It would thus appear that both the selections and the numbers were adequate to make a valuable beginning in a new phase of the subject.