After going back and looking at the Frederick Douglass text I found a non traditional way to view the slave songs that are described and relate it to what was discussed the past few class periods. In class we spent a good amount of time discussing modern day sampling in music as well as cover songs, and how these samples and covers affect us as listeners. One recurring theme that seemed to be agreed upon by almost everyone who read the articles was the idea that a cover has the ability to completely change a song’s feeling and meaning. Generally covers or samples seem to stay closer to the original work stylistically but we can see this change in feeling or meaning in certain instances. This happens when the artist of the cover changes a fundamental aspect of the song. This can be the beat, singing style, lyric changing or a combination of these things. Frederick Douglass describes that the slaves, “Would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone.” In a way it can be said that when the slaves sung of the worst of their hardships in the happiest of styles, this is similar to a cover in a way. When covers of songs are sung and there are large changes to some aspect of the song we can have a very different perception of the song, and the song itself can appear to no longer be a part of the music it is accompanied by. When the slaves described by Douglass chose to sing the words of a very deep and saddening song in a generally positive style they changed how everyone who was not a slave perceived the music, as well as even some of the younger slaves (Douglass himself acknowledges he was no always aware what was being communicated through song.) The people who lived outside slavery paid more attention to how the songs were sung as opposed to the words themselves and ended up being deluded and thinking the slaves themselves were singing joyous songs, when in actuality they are singing of the most horrible things in their lives.
