Of The Sorrow Songs

The Sea Islands of the Carolinas, where they met, were filled with a black folk of primitive type, touched and moulded less by the world about them than any others outside the Black Belt. Their appearance was uncouth, their language funny, but their hearts were human and their singing stirred men with a mighty power.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson hastened to tell of these songs, and Miss McKim and others urged upon the world their rare beauty. But the world listened only half credulously until the Fisk Jubilee Singers sang the slave songs so deeply into the world's heart that it can never wholly forget them again.

I strongly feel that W.E.B. Du Bois was fearless in his passionate pursuit to deliver his message. He knew what needed to be said and he knew how to say it. Lessons are learned to those willing to allow the knowledge inside. I loved the history and fascinating literary expression exposed in Du Bois' essays. He challenged the reader to look at the issue presented in another view - and for the reader to do something about it. W.E.B. Du Bois' writing can be trying to keep up with the message; however, the reader will become transformed. In the "Of The Sorrow Songs" the essay teaches to welcome the burdens of neglect and to learn the purpose of the journey. The songs of the past allow the stories to be heard leading towards healing our wounds:

The songs are indeed the siftings of centuries; the music is far more ancient than the words, and in it we can trace here and there signs of development. My grandfather's grandmother was seized by an evil Dutch trader two centuries ago; and coming to the valleys of the Hudson and Housatonic, black, little, and lithe, she shivered and shrank in the harsh north winds, looked longingly at the hills, and often crooned a heathen melody to the child between her knees, thus:

Do ba - na co - ba, ge - ne me, ge - ne me! Do ba - na co - ba, ge - ne me, ge - ne me! Ben d' nu - li, nu - li, nu - li, nu - li, ben d' le. The child sang it to his children and they to their children's children, and so two hundred years it has traveled down to us and we sing it to our children,