Storytelling through Music

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Negro Spirituals

During the mid-nineteenth century, oral tradition was still prominent in the United States, especially for slaves. Most slaves of the late 1800s could not read or write, and so most of what slaves learned was from each other—and from listening and repeating to others. It was through this type of communication that Negro spirituals were born (Smith, 2008). Slaves would make up lyrics to these songs to tell their stories and the stories of the other slaves around them. Their heritage was preserved for future generations through these songs. But, spirituals had an underlying use, as well. They were often used to embed code through words that the slaves could follow, but in a way that slave owners could not understand their true meaning. Through “sorrow songs” slaves could tell the true story of the treatment they received at the hands of their owners without their owners realizing what was being said about them (Smith, 2008). Spirituals were also used to secretively transfer information along the Underground Railroad through the same kind of special coding that could not be perceived by slave owners. Many of these songs have been passed down through multiple generations and are still known today.

Folk Music

Folk music is deeply rooted in the oral storytelling tradition of the common man. With politics, civil rights, and romantic stories at the heart of the genre, folk music naturally tells the story of the people which it represents. During the twentieth century, the folk song was used to fight social injustice many times—from child labor laws, to the Great Depression, to the Civil Rights Movement (Ruehl, n.d.). Folk songs have been preserved by poets and musicians who have found value in the history which is a part of the folk song.   

Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg is known as the "Poet of the People" (Niven, 2003), but he was also a musician from a young age. As he become known for his poetry in the 1920s, Sandburg would travel across the country-- much like a minstrel of the past. As he traveled reciting his poetry, he would also collect folk songs, and as he collected them, he would perform them along with his poetry (Niven, 2003). Not only did Sandburg collect folk songs as he travelled, but he also collected stories from people he met along the way. This impacted his poetry in a big way, and he began writing poems that also told stories. Sandburg pulled from his own memories as a boy on a prairie and "poured the experiences of real life into his poetry" (Niven, 2003). 

Woody Guthrie

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Woody Guthrie was a troubadour musician who travelled across America "soaking up songs" (Partridge, 2002). He collected songs from mountain musicians, chain gangs, seamen, cowboys, and everyday hard labor workers. He used all of the songs he was exposed to as inspiration for writing his own songs, and in 1940, Guthrie wrote the song "This Land is Your Land", portraying the beauty of the country he had travelled through, paired with the struggles of the people he had met along the way during the Great Depression. Guthrie's whole purpose was to sing songs which would "...make you take pride in yourself" (Partridge, 2002) -- a characteristic that made Guthrie a great musical storyteller.   

Pete Seeger

Other folk musicians have been inspired by Guthrie's way of telling stories of “the people” through song, including Pete Seeger. In 1940, at the age of twenty, Seeger met Guthrie backstage at a benefit concert. Seeger and Guthrie began travelling and performing together. In Seeger’s words, this began his “big, big education in learning about America” (Appleseed Recordings, 2012). This education led Seeger to follow in Guthrie’s footsteps, as a folk singer, song collector, storyteller, and champion for the average man (Pareles, 2014). Seeger saw folk music and storytelling as a means of connecting community, and through connecting community, creating change. One of the songs about change that Seeger is best known for is one that he learned from a fellow folk musician. Seeger’s “We Shall Overcome”, which would later become known as the anthem of the civil rights movement, was a song that he had learned from a folk school cultural director. Striking tobacco workers had introduced the original hymn, “I’ll Overcome Someday” to the director, and the director taught the song to Seeger, who simply changed a couple of the words before recording the song himself (Molloy, 2014). This was a great example of Seeger’s belief in the power of community, song, and story to the human cause. In Seeger’s own words, “The key to the future of the world is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known” (Pareles, 2014).

John Jacob Niles

John Jacob Niles, a folk music collector and ballad composer from Kentucky, was known for storytelling through a combination of folk music and dramatic performance. Niles collected folk songs from the mountains of Kentucky, and performed them through accompanying himself with the state instrument, the dulcimer. The musician also valued the connection that the mountain song had to the people who sang it, and used vocalizations to connect to the emotions of the story being told through the song. Niles also collected and recited poems collected from the mountains of Kentucky, and would also act out the story physically while reciting the words. He understood the connection between the story and the song, saying, “A ballad is a song that tells a story—or take it from the other point of view, a story told in song” (PBS, 2011).