Sinful Tunes And Spirituals
Black Folk Music to the Civil War
Classic study of black slave music in America.
Paper – $33
978-0-252-07150-8
Publication Date
Paperback: 08/12/2003
Series: Music in American Life
About the Book
From the plaintive tunes of woe sung by exiled kings and queens of Africa to the spirited worksongs and "shouts" of freedmen, in Sinful Tunes and Spirituals Dena J. Epstein traces the course of early black folk music in all its guises.This classic work is being reissued with a new author's preface on the silver anniversary of its original publication.
About the Author
Dena J. Epstein (1916-2013) was a retired assistant music librarian at the Joseph Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, and a past president of the Music Library Association.Also by this author
Reviews
"No previous scholar has told more about the manner of diffusion of African music and dance in the New World . . . . No one else has related with more telling effect the impact that Afro-American musical patterns had upon the sensibilities of the white public."--Lawrence W. Levine, Journal of American History"Epstein has uncovered far more about early black music than anyone thought possible. Her luxuriant quotations and definitive treatments of a wide variety of musical subtopics make the book an essential reference volume and a marvelous storehouse of information."--John B. Boles, Journal of Southern History
"Sinful Tunes ensures that we will never again be able to sing or listen to a spiritual in quite the same way. We can now see more clearly than ever before what has shaped it; we have been taken nearer the soul of the music."--Hugh Brogan, Times Literary Supplement
"[A] definitive, indeed monumental study of black slave music in America."--Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr., Musical Quarterly
Awards
• Winner, Chicago Folklore Prize, 2004• Winner, Francis B. Simkins Award -- (SHA) , 1979
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