spirituals

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

THE OXFORD BOOK OF SPIRITUALS
edited by Moses Hogan
Oxford University Press 2002

I'm looking at it right now. There is NO historical information on the spirituals. I don't mean a little. I mean NO INFORMATION. There a two-page preface "A Note on Dialect" by James Weldon Johnson, but that's it. How could Oxford publish a book like this?

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AMERICAN NEGRO SONGS:
A COMPREHENSIVE COLLECTION OF 250 FOLK SONGS, RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR, WITH A FOREWORD BY JOHN W. WORK
New York: Howell, Soskin & Co.
1940

No historical information again!

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THE BOOK OF AMERICAN NEGRO SPIRITUALS
edited with an introduction by James Weldon Johnson
Musical arrangements by J. Rosamond Johnson
Additional numbers by Lawrence Brown
1925 and 1926, two volumes, Viking Press
1969, one volume, Da Capo Press

Again, no historical information!


NYPL--The Schomburg Library was supposed to digitize most all of its collection before about 1930. That hasn't been done. There is a digital database called "The Africa-American Migration Experience." There is also a Digital Schomburg (http://www.nypl.org/research/sc/digital.html). "Swing low" produced no hits!