  For the Du Bois of Souls, the art that sovereign souls appreciate is high art—or, in other words, art that shares with the sovereign souls that appreciate it the property of holistic self-development. In “The Sorrow Songs,” the final chapter of Souls, Du Bois represents the group spirit that unites black Americans as clarifying its distinctive message through the medium of the folk song. Considered in historical perspective, the musically embodied spirit of the black folk, as it actualizes itself through time, in folk song after folk song, acquires a spiritually comprehensive breadth that overcomes racial prejudice and provincialism. To these songs, which manifest a developing folk spirit and that constitute an evolving tradition of black musical art, Du Bois contrasts a “mass” of spiritually inert minstrel songs, gospel hymns and coon songs (1903a, 124). In essence, he argues that, no less than Wagner’s operas, which he admired, the spiritually-inspired black folk song belongs to the canon of high art from which the low arts of the minstrel song and the like are excluded.