Impressions of a Negro Camp Meeting - Eight Traditional Tunes Adapted and Arranged for Voice and Piano by John J. Niles, Carl Fischer

The first musical arrangement published by John J. Niles. Published 1925 by Carl Fischer. Rare, scarce copy. Good condition, was repaired at one point in the past with binding tape.

Here is an excellent write-up about this publication:
https://myauctionfinds.com/2016/10/05/african-american-camp-meeting-songs-captured-in-anothers-hand/

Excerpt:
"The arranger of the songs for piano and voice was a man named John J. Niles, and the songs were compiled in 1925. I’d never heard of him so I Googled his name. I found that Niles was not African American, but a Kentucky white man who had listened to the songs at church services, and had adapt them and put them to paper.

Niles wrote in the book’s Foreword that the songs were the “impressions gained while attending Negro Camp-meetings in Kentucky. They are based on traditional tunes but are absolutely not the so-called spirituals.” He was careful not to call the eight songs spirituals. They were said to be based on the style of impressionist composers.

Niles was collecting folk music at a time when spirituals were a predominant form of African American musical expression that stretched back to slavery, where it was used to communicate suffering, pain, supplication and calls for freedom. By the late 19th century, groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers took the music international, composers such as Harry T. Burleigh took it to the concert stage, and brothers James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson and others published it.

Niles was a composer, folk singer and transcriber of oral songs, some of it from the people of the Appalachian Mountains. Several well-known singers have recorded his works, including Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary, and actress Marlene Dietrich."
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