The Books of American Negro Spirituals


Printed:	1988	Author:	James Weldon Johnson
Publisher:	Da Capo Press	ISBN:	0306800748
Suppliers:

Including the Book of American Negro Spirituals and the Second Book of Negro Spirituals
Paperback 2 Vol in 1 edition (April 1988), usually ships within 24 hours.
Amazon Review
Outstanding transcriptions of traditional music, April 11, 1999
Reviewer: Lynda Schemansky (lgslgs@earthlink.com) from USA
This book stays true to aural tradition and offers outstanding, non-Westernized arrangements of the aural traditional music of African American spirituals. The choice of using phonetic spellings for the lyrics means that the lyrics are heavy in the use of words like "dese", "dose", "Heab'n", etc. However, given the original publication being in the 1920's, and the author's comments in the introduction, it is apparent that the spellings are not the result of gross cultural insensitivity.
The respect for, and love of this fine music comes through in the author's comments. And the transcriptions retain the strong harmonic features that are often "arranged out" of collections of aural traditional music. It is a fine collection, and an absolute steal at the price.