cents fall as a rule on the stressed syllables of the
spoken tongue and on the regular beats of the music. The opposite is
the case in Negro songs: here the rhythms are uneven, jagged, and, at
a first hearing, eccentric, for the accents fall most frequently on
the short notes and on the naturally _unstressed_ beats, producing
what we call 'syncopation' of a very intricate and highly developed
order. The peculiarity of this syncopation is best explained to the
layman by drawing attention to the way in which the natural rhythms of
the English language are distorted to fit the rhythm of Negro music:
where the white man would sing, '_Go down Moses_,' the Negro chants,
'_Go down, Moses_,' while a phrase like '_See my Mother_,' becomes in
the mouth of the colored singer '_See my Mother_.' These identical
accents are found in even the wordless vowel refrains of native
African songs. Rhythmically the Negro folk-song has far more variety
of accent than the European; it captivates the ear and the imagination
with its exciting vitality and with its sense of alertness and
movement. For this reason Negro rhythms and white man imitations of
them popularized as 'rag-time' have spread far and wide and have
conquered the world to-day. The black man has by nature a highly
organized rhythmic sense. A totally uneducated Negro, dancing or
playing the bones, is often a consummate artist in rhythm, performing
with utter abandon and yet with flawless accuracy. My African
informant, Kamba Simango, thought nothing of singing one rhythm,
beating another with his hands and dancing a third--and all at once!

"Melodically as well as rhythmically, American Negro songs possess
distinct characteristics. One of these is a very prevalent use of the
pentatonic or five-tone scale, corresponding to the black keys of the
piano. If one comes upon a group of colored men unconsciously humming
or whistling at work, most often it is the five-tone scale that utters
their musical thoughts. This scale--along with other scales--is heard
in black Africa also, and in the music of many simple peoples in
different parts of the world. Indeed, just as totally unrelated races
at certain stages of culture seem to trace many of the same
rudimentary symbols and designs on pottery and in textiles, so in
music, the archaic simplicity of the five-tone scale would seem almost
a basic human art-instinct. Yet the highly developed civilization and
the carefully defined musical system