songs has been made the subject of a
careful investigation by Howard Odum in his _Study of the Social and
Mental Traits of the Negro_. He says: "The Negro's fancies of
'Heaven's bright home' are scarcely exceeded by our fairy tales. There
are silver and golden slippers, crowns of stars, jewels and belts of
gold. There are robes of spotless white and wings all bejeweled with
heavenly gems. Beyond the Jordan the Negro will outshine the sun, moon
and stars. He will slip and slide the golden street and eat the fruit
of the trees of paradise.... With rest and ease, with a golden band
about him and with palms of victory in his hands and beautiful robes,
the Negro will indeed be a happy being.... To find a happy home, to
see all the loved ones and especially the Biblical characters, to see
Jesus and the angels, to walk and talk with them, to wear robes and
slippers as they do, and to _rest forever_, constitute the chief
images of the Negro's heaven. He is tired of the world which has been
a hell to him. Now on his knees, now shouting, now sorrowful and glad,
the Negro comes from 'hanging over hell' to die and sit by the
Father's side."[12]

In the imagery which the Negro chooses to clothe his hopes and dreams,
we have, as in the musical idiom in which he expresses them,
reflections of the imagination and the temperament of Africa and the
African. On the other hand, in the themes of this rude rhapsodical
poetry--the House of Bondage, Moses, the Promised Land, Heaven, the
apocalyptic visions of Freedom--but freedom confined miraculously and
to another world--these are the reflections of the Negro's experience
in slavery.

The Negro's songs of slavery have been referred to by Du Bois in his
_Soul of Black-Folk_ as sorrow songs, and other writers have made the
assertion that all the songs of the slaves were in a plaintive minor
key. As a matter of fact, investigation has shown that actually less
than twelve per cent of Negro songs are in a minor.[13] There are no
other folk songs, with the exception of those of Finland, of which so
large a percentage are in the major mood. And this is interesting as
indicating the racial temperament of the Negro. It tends to justify
the general impression that the Negro is temperamentally sunny,
cheerful, optimistic. It is true that the slave songs express longing,
that they refer to "hard trials and great tribulations," but the
dominant mood is one of jubilation, "Going to sing, going to shout,