Songs of Slavery and Emancipation By Mat Callahan. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2022.

Mat Callahan is a musician, songwriter, producer, activist, and author whose latest project, Songs of Slavery and Emancipation, might be important for those with an interest in nineteenth-century Black music, abolition song, and musical activism. Songs of Slavery and Emancipation is a multimedia endeavor that includes an album released by Jalopy Records, a 50-minute film available on YouTube, and a book published by the University of Mississippi Press. The book, which is the focus of this review, is a collection of thirty-one songs about slavery and abolition, the story of the scholarly journey that led Callahan to them, and an assertion of both their historical importance and contemporary social relevance.

Callahan draws the songs mostly from published nineteenth- and twentieth-century collections. He usually documents multiple sources for their lyrics, which appears in Part 2 of the book. Although he notes whether the music exists in notation, tablature, or by reference to a melody borrowed from pre-existing song, his book does not contain any music notation. The accompanying album is a collaborative creative product inspired by the historical record, including a few melodies composed by Callahan for song lyrics that survive without a musical source or reference. The collection is musically varied, including styles of somber spirituals, comic minstrel dialect songs, sacred harp, marches, and patriotic anthems.

Callahan categorizes his selections as “slave songs” and “abolition songs.” Those he considers “slave songs” include two eighteenth-century songs, one lament, “The Dirge of St. Malo,” for a Black insurrectionist Juan St. Malo, who was tortured and lynched in New Orleans, and another that calls for rebellion against slavery, “Rebeldia Na Bandabou.” Others celebrate specific rebels such as Nat Turner (“Gaining Ground”) and Gabriel Prosser (“Uncle Gabriel, The Negro General”). Several more promise freedom, demand freedom, and directly call for enslaved people to take up arms and fight. A march by Francis Johnson celebrates Haitian Independence. A few dialect songs comically mock slave holders and celebrate their demise. Finally, Callahan includes one song without a known published source—an audio recording from the Library of Congress, titled “Agonizing Cruel Slavery Days,” sung by Elijah Cox.

Callahan's set of “abolition songs” come from nineteenth-century songsters likely to be familiar to those who work in this area of U.S. music history. Many of these songs were composed and sung by white abolitionists, but Callahan emphasizes those published by and, when possible, composed by free Black people. He relies heavily on The Anti Slavery Harp (1848), edited by William Wells Brown, and The Emancipation Car (1854) composed by Joshua McCarter Simpson.¹ Song lyrics in these collections recruit abolitionists, chronicle journeys along the Underground Railroad, and mock the hypocrisies of Christian slaveholders and Democratic enslavement. Almost all of the selected “abolition songs” are contrafacta, but it is not part of his project to interpret the relationships to pre-existing songs. Together, this curated collection of thirty-one songs present explicit lyrics that enable resistance, encourage escape, and foment rebellion.

Callahan, along with historian Robin D. G. Kelley who authored an introduction to the book, urge the use of this song collection to counter common misconceptions about nineteenth-century Black music and abolition. “Spirituals,” sometimes with coded messages about escape, are what most people know as “slave songs,” but as Callahan and Kelley point out, this is a mischaracterization of a genre that is also not necessarily representative of the diversity of the era's Black music making. When spirituals are presented as sole representatives of “slave song,” the Christian religiosity of enslaved people is not necessarily distinguished from the Christianity practiced by slave holders. In the book's introduction, Kelley explains that even though most Black communities in the United States embraced Christianity by the 1830s, they transformed it away from the “gospel according to the master” and into a “prophetic theology of liberation” wherein the masters were the sinners and enslaved people the God's true believers (6). Because Old Testament stories contain redemptive violence on behalf of poor and oppressed, Black people easily identified with the flight of Jews out of Egypt in Exodus. The songs Callahan draws attention to often contain Biblical references but are not part of the canon of spirituals known today, and they depart significantly from the usual lyric content and musical style of familiar spirituals. Despite the usual practice of treating “slave song” and “abolition song” as distinct repertoires (which implies that enslaved people were not active abolitionists), Callahan acknowledges that he is influenced by historian Manisha Sinha's observation about the relatedness of slave and abolition song repertoires. Together, Callahan and Kelley assert the historical importance of songs that counter the misperception that the resistance against slavery was infrequent, unsuccessful, and meek. The longevity of abolition activity, beginning with enslaved Africans themselves and the frequency of rebellion, is generally accepted knowledge among historians, but much less known outside of academia.

Callahan asserts that correcting misconceptions about music and history is not his ultimate purpose. He is foremost an activist who sees current relevance for this repertoire—not just the historical arguments it supports. He therefore writes about his hopes for this book's ability to lead to a broad reappraisal of this music, how it is transmitted, and how it is used today (47). Kali Akuno, who wrote the book's afterword, argues that these historical songs bring “inspiration and revolutionary clarity” to today's struggles for racial equality (72), echoing Kelley, who in the introduction asserts that these songs can still be “fire that inspires us” to work for social justice today (24).

Although its activist lens is a strength, the book has its shortcomings when measured against the standards of academic book publishing. For such a wide-ranging topic, this book is short and light in content. Scholars well versed in the history of the abolition movement and nineteenth-century Black music will probably not find new arguments or sources here. Academics may even be frustrated by the book's style, which narrates the research journey in prose form rather than pithy footnotes. Callahan also seems to prefer storytelling over interpreting and historicizing sources or building arguments. The bibliography is scant, especially given the broadly interdisciplinary nature of this topic, which ranges from musicology to history and literary, cultural, American, and African American studies. I say none of this to dismiss this contribution, since it does hold potential value for general audiences new to this topic.

Although the characteristics described above may read like criticisms, they are also features that render this book particularly appropriate for undergraduate students. There is enough historical context provided here to satisfy the needs of students in a music course and enough description of music scholarship to satisfy the needs of history students without backgrounds in music. Although the bibliography is not exhaustive, it is a sufficient and appropriately reverent introduction to the foundational work done by Eileen Southern, Josephine Wright, and Dana Epstein. Callahan's tendency to introduce sources in the order in which he encountered them, crediting the scholars who recommended books and collections of primary sources along the way, actually offers a beautiful model of curiosity, respect for expertise, and a realistic depiction of non-linear scholarly processes that would be illustrative and inspiring for undergraduate students. Callahan explains how to locate collections of primary sources, digitized and otherwise, demonstrating how students (or anyone) can easily access much musical material online for their own research and activism. He also acknowledges that not all knowledge or sources are available online, which is a message equally important for students. Callahan's book, especially as combined with the album, functions as an anthology with a research-based introduction suitable for a wide range of undergraduate classes. I will certainly be assigning parts of it in my own courses.