An African Work Song, Barbados, ca. 1770s-1780s

Description

This one-page manuscript, also shown on the Gloucester Archives website, is described as: An African Song or Chant,--taken down in notes by G.S. from the information of Dr. Wm. Dickson, who lived several years in the West Indies, & was secretary to a Governor of Barbadoes. A Single Negro (while at work with the rest of the gang) leads the song, and the others join in chorus at the end of every verse. This work song incorporates the widespread African musical feature of call-and-response. William Dickson lived in Barbados for about 13 years from 1772, was well acquainted with slavery and slave life in Barbados and authored two well-known books on the island. He later joined the British abolitionist movement and became a leading member of that movement in Scotland. The G.S. in the manuscript is Granville Sharp, a prominent British abolitionist. The wider context of this song in the musical lives of the enslaved is discussed in J.S. Handler and C.J.Frisbie, Aspects of Slave Life in Barbados: Music and its Cultural Context, Caribbean Studies 11 (1972): 5-46. The linguistic features of the text are discussed in J. R. Rickford and J. S. Handler, Textual Evidence on the Nature of Early Barbadian Speech, 1676-1835. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 9 (1994): 221-255.

Source

Gloucester Archives (Clarence Row, Gloucester, England), D3549/13/3/2758.

Creator

Dickenson, William

Language

English

Rights

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

Identifier

NW0013

Spatial Coverage

Caribbean--Barbados

Item sets

Music, Dance, & Recreational Activities

Citation

"An African Work Song, Barbados, ca. 1770s-1780s", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed June 6, 2023, http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/1002
This one-page manuscript, also shown on the Gloucester Archives website, is described as: An African Song or Chant,--taken down in notes by G.S. from the information of Dr. Wm. Dickson, who lived several years in the West Indies, & was secretary to a Governor of Barbadoes. A Single Negro (while at work with the rest of the gang) leads the song, and the others join in chorus at the end of every verse. This work song incorporates the widespread African musical feature of call-and-response. William Dickson lived in Barbados for about 13 years from 1772, was well acquainted with slavery and slave life in Barbados and authored two well-known books on the island. He later joined the British abolitionist movement and became a leading member of that movement in Scotland. The G.S. in the manuscript is Granville Sharp, a prominent British abolitionist. The wider context of this song in the musical lives of the enslaved is discussed in J.S. Handler and C.J.Frisbie, Aspects of Slave Life in Barbados: Music and its Cultural Context, Caribbean Studies 11 (1972): 5-46. The linguistic features of the text are discussed in J. R. Rickford and J. S. Handler, Textual Evidence on the Nature of Early Barbadian Speech, 1676-1835. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 9 (1994): 221-255.
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