Through leaving unspoiled this fresh, intuitive song-impulse in the Negro, and through cherishing the old music in its original purity and simplicity, Hampton has glorified the song of the slave as it has dignified the manual labor of the freedman, and is preserving in living form that spontaneous musical utterance which is the Negro's priceless contribution to the art of America.
Negro dialect is used in these notations, for to sing these typical Negro songs in words from which have been expunged the racial and picturesque quality seems as colorless, inartistic and unnatural as to sing Scotch or Irish ballads in anything but the vernacular, or German and French folk-songs in other than their own quaint and simple verse.