Discusses the essence and development of various forms of Negro folk music, both vocal and instrumental, including ballads, blues, spirituals, worksongs, Louisiana Creole songs, cries, dances, and game songs. Includes words and music for forty-three songs, and discographies.

In this anthology, "A Treasure of Afro-American Folklore", Harold Courlander brings together oral traditions of black communities in the Western Hemisphere and demonstrates the powerful cultural influence on Africa on this side of the Atlantic. Afro-American folklore includes a wide array of orally transmitted traditions of the numerous, sometimes disparate, Negro cultures of the New World. Among these traditions are tales of scoundrels, heroes, rollicking...