Writing Homework Help

he two most significant contributions of The Souls of Black Folk are, arguably, the concept of double consciousness and Du Bois’s discussion of what he calls the “sorrow songs,” the music of African American slaves that came to be known in the twentieth century as “Negro spirituals” and have since come to be understood within a broader scope of African American expressive culture.

Post a 350-400-word response to some of the following questions:

Why does Du Bois want us to hear African American music? He includes musical transcriptions throughout this particular chapter, and as epigraphs to each individual chapter as well. Why is music so important to his overarching argument about the “souls” of African Americans? How is singing—and listening to the music sung by others—a “spiritual” endeavor? Can you show, with properly cited direct evidence, a moment he brings in a piece of music to link to a larger subject or theme in the text? How would you analyze that connection?