SOURCE: "Folk-Song and Folk-Poetry as Found in The Secular Songs of the Southern Negroes," in The Journal of American Folk-Lore, Vol. XXIV, No. XCIII, July-September, 1911, pp. 255-94, 351-92.

In the following excerpt, Odum identifies and categorizes the various types of African-American music, dividing the between the spiritual and secular, the latter of which displayed the style and subject matter for early blues songs.

An examination of the first twenty volumes of the Journal of American Folk-Lore, and a study of the published folk-songs of the Southern negroes, reveal a large amount of valuable material for the student of folksongs and ballads. Investigation of the field indicates a still larger supply of songs as yet not collected or published. Unfortunately the collection of these songs has been permitted to lapse within recent years, although there is no indication that even a majority have been collected. In fact, the supply...