Index to African-American Spirituals for the Solo Voice

Spirituals were an intrinsic part of the African-American plantation life and were sung at all important occasions and events. This volume is the first index of African-American spirituals to be published in more than half a century and will be an important research tool for scholars and students of African-American history and music. The first collection of slave songs appeared in 1843, without musical notation, in a series of three articles by a Methodist Church missionary identified simply as c. Collections that included musical notation began appearing in the 1850s. The earliest book-length collection of spirituals containing both lyrics and music was published in 1867 and entitled Slave Songs of the United States. Not since the 1930s, with the publication of the Index to Negro Spirituals by the Cleveland Public Library, has an index of spirituals been compiled.The spirituals are neatly organized in four indexes: a title index, first line index, alternate title index and a topical index that includes twenty major categories. A bibliography of indexed sources serves as a guide for further research.

?An Index to African-American Spirituals for the Solo Voice is highly recommended for all music collections. It will be especially valuable to larger public and academic collections that may have a number of the original spiritual collections. It will also be a valuable source to be collected by individuals who work with choirs or otherwise study this form of music.?-American Reference Books Annual, ?Does this book fill a gap in the literature? Absolutely. The author tells us that in the 1930s the Cleveland Public Library published an index that was reissued in 1991, but the Abromeit volume is the first new book that has been published in more than fifty years. This was verifed by a search of the library online databases. Although information on some spiritual can be found in standard song indexes, this new volume concentrating on spirituals for the solo voice will find wide usuage in every kind of library.?-RUSQ, ?It is an essential guide to spirituals in collections published since the 1930s, and libraries will want to have it.?-Notes, ?The present work will be welcomed by singers, choir directors, and reference librarians. Some 65 collections (including many titles out of print) were analyzed for this index, the first published in more than half a century. The main body is an alphabetical list of spirituals, and there are indexes of first lines, alternate (variant) titles, and topics. Highly recommended for all libraries.?-Choice, "An Index to African-American Spirituals for the Solo Voice is highly recommended for all music collections. It will be especially valuable to larger public and academic collections that may have a number of the original spiritual collections. It will also be a valuable source to be collected by individuals who work with choirs or otherwise study this form of music."-American Reference Books Annual

KATHLEEN A. ABROMEIT is the Conservatory Public Services Librarian at Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio./e An active member of the the Music Library Association, she has written numerous reviews and articles for scholarly journals.