The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music
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- Release Date: 09/11/2001
- 6 Disc Set
- Sales Rank: 62,272
- Label: BUDDHA
- UPC: 744659975622
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The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music
Editorial Reviews
Harry Belafonte's name is nowhere to be found on the cover of the attractive box that houses The Long Road to Freedom, or on the title page of the 140-page book that accompanies its five CDs -- an example of the modesty and restraint that led him to create this astonishing treasure in the first place. In the late 1950s, when he proposed the idea of recording a history of African-American music from the earliest days of slavery to the close of the 19th century, he was rivaled only by Elvis Presley as RCA's top record seller. RCA's president, George Marek, an uncommonly musical executive who later wrote several important biographies, committed the company to the project, leading to a decade of recording sessions, beginning in 1961. Yet after Marek's death, the project mysteriously died, abandoned and apparently forgotten, for 30 years. It's release now is a major event, certainly the most important of the season. These discs may change the way we hear, understand, and write about black music. Most anthologies of this kind collate old records. Belafonte insisted on researching 300 years of black America's folk music and recording new performances that highlight the music's durability while underscoring historic authenticity. His approach is in the often neglected and misunderstood tradition of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who presented spirituals in concert arrangements in the 1870s -- a conflation of reality and art. He corralled a handful of recording stars (including Joe Williams, heard here at his very best; Gloria Lynne; Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry; and the astonishing Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers), but his most important decision was to recruit the choral director Leonard De Paur, whose arrangements bring this often chilling, inspiring, and, in many instances, largely unknown repertoire to exhilarating life. Sadly, some documentation from the original sessions has apparently been lost, and the book, handsome and informative though it is (with drawings by Charles White, photographs by Roy DeCarava, an interview with Belafonte, and an essay by Mari Evans), fails to investigate the origins of most of the material and neglects to explain why the project was abandoned and the recordings not released for 30 years. The performances, however, arranged by subject and period (Civil War songs, slave songs, chain gang songs, children's songs, and on), speak volumes, and the engineering is beyond cavil. The sound is as robust as if it had been recorded yesterday. These recordings are perhaps best uncovered in sections and savored. But however you listen, it is not to be missed. Gary Giddins, Barnes & Noble
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