Translator: Anita Gonzaléz

(no biographical information available about Anita Gonzaléz.) Go to person page >

Adapter: John W. Work

John Wesley Work II (sometimes Jr.) was born, educated, worked and died in Nashville. He majored in history and Latin at Fisk University (B.A. 1895, M.S. 1898), after which he was instructor of Greek and Latin until 1906 when he was appointed chair of the department. Work and his brother, Frederick Jerome (1879-1942), were leading figures in the preservation, performance and study of African-American spirituals. They published several collections of slave songs and spirituals, including New Jubilee Songs as Sung by Fisk Jubilee Singers (1901) and Folk Songs of the American Negro (1907). John Work II’s treatise The Folk Song of the American Negro (1915) was one of the earliest studies of African-American music undertaken by a descend… Go to person page >