With an old-fashioned phonograph strapped on his back, a sawed-off megaphone and a bundle of blank aluminum records, a lean, scraggly-haired New Yorker has been touring the South for the past nine years, collecting Negro songs that few white men have ever heard. Like his older brother Artist Hugo Gellert, Collector Lawrence Gellert is an ardent Left Winger. He scorns the idea that most Negroes when left to themselves will either sing spirituals or dance to the blues. The songs that fascinated Lawrence Gellert were those symbolic of Negro class consciousness, unrest and...
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