Presented to the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, November 2020

ABSTRACT

Historians and musicologists often acknowledge that song helped build the case against slavery in Antebellum America from the 1830s to the Civil War, but despite the plethora of surviving anti-slavery songsters, few musicologists have examined the repertoire carefully, perhaps because of the non-original music frequently used or general lack of music notation in the published songsters. Joshua Simpson’s Original Anti-Slavery Songs published in 1852 is worthy of careful study. It is both representative of the genre and unique. Like others, it is a portable size intended for use at anti-slavery gatherings and in homes and contains only lyrics with references to prescribed melodies. Unlike most other known songsters which were compilations of poetry from a several authors, Simpson authored all the poetry in his collection. As an African American man, his perspective in the field dominated by white editors is also especially valuable.

From the broadside ballads of Revolutionary era to the contrafacta made famous by the Hutchinson Family singers in the 1840s, the practice of writing new, timely, and often politically-oriented lyrics for a popular melody was well-established by the time Simpson published his work. He conformed to the practice not merely for convenience or efficiency, but to enhance the moral and political influences of the songs. Simpson employs a variety of song types reflecting popular music of America in the 1850s (hymns, patriotic anthems, sentimental ballads, and minstrel tunes), chosen deliberately to reflect the mid-century expansion of the anti-slavery movement from its religious and moral roots toward the arena of political activism and transatlantic cooperation. Simpson is attentive to time and pitch organization, as evidenced by his vivid text-painting that powerfully invokes two texts simultaneously and reveals poetic resonances that directly engage issues historically important to the growing movement, from Liberian colonization to the Fugitive Slave Law. His pairings of text and music are witty, ironic, irreverent, clever, and motivational. Historians remember Simpson as a poet, but his profound cultural work is done through music; melody binds two texts together for the purpose of complicated, deeply resonant abolitionist messages that encouraged expansion of the movement.