Roger Abrahams — authority on folklore of African Americans

Roger Abrahams, one of the first folklorists to study the language and performance styles of black Americans as reflected in songs, proverbs and riddles both old and new, died June 20 in Sunnyvale. He was 84.

His son, Rod, confirmed the death without specifying a cause, but said that Mr. Abrahams had been treated for heart problems.

Mr. Abrahams (pronounced Abrams) cast his net wide, exploring Anglo-American folk songs, jump-rope rhymes and counting rhymes, but devoted most of his scholarly energies to the African diaspora in the Caribbean and the United States.

In “Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia,” published in 1964, he analyzed the street rhymes and repartee he observed and recorded in South Philadelphia.

Earlier folklorists had focused on black religious expression, the language of the church and pulpit. Mr. Abrahams described a new and vibrant verbal world, exuberant, profane and endlessly inventive. He explained the fine points of the dozens — a street-corner battle of wits in which participants traded insults — and analyzed traditional poems like “The Signifying Monkey,” whose opening line provided Mr. Abrahams with the title of his book.

His purpose, he wrote in his introduction, was not merely to transcribe but “to show how much insight can be attained into the life of a group through the analysis of its folklore.”

In “Singing the Master: The Emergence of African American Culture in the Plantation South” (1992), Mr. Abrahams turned back the clock to study the cornshucking ceremony, a ritual with songs and chants that he reconstructed through newspaper accounts, travelers tales and diaries as a means of understanding the social dynamics of plantation society.

Historian Wilson Moses, reviewing the book in the Historian, called Mr. Abrahams “probably the most celebrated living preservationist of African American secular oral traditions.”

John Szwed, Mr. Abrahams’ collaborator on “Discovering AfroAmerica” (1975) and the essay collection “Blues for New Orleans: Mardi Gras and America’s Creole Soul” (2006), said of him: “He redefined what folklore was, in every sense. He moved it from the written text toward performance, and put the material into a political and cultural framework.”

Roger David Abrahams was born on June 12, 1933, in Philadelphia, where his father, Robert, was a prominent lawyer and sometime novelist. His mother, the former Florence Kohn, was a housewife and philanthropist.

He enrolled in Swarthmore College, where a campus concert by Pete Seeger in 1953 proved to be a transformative experience for him and his friend Ralph Rinzler, the future folk-music scholar and a fellow Gilbert and Sullivan enthusiast. Together they began performing locally, with Mr. Abrahams on guitar and Rinzler on banjo.

After graduating with an English degree in 1955, Mr. Abrahams began studying law at the University of Pennsylvania. He failed his exams, but a course on English and American folklore taught by eminent folklorist MacEdward Leach opened a new door.

He moved to New York and plunged into the emerging folk music scene, performing at the Cafe Bizarre and singing with Paul Clayton and Dave Van Ronk on the Folkways album “Foc’sle Songs and Shanties,” released in 1959. He later recorded his own album, “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor and Other Folk Songs” in 1962. For a time, he was an editor and writer at the folkmusic magazine Caravan.

After earning a master’s degree in literature and folklore from Columbia University in 1959, Mr. Abrahams returned to the University of Pennsylvania, where, under the direction of Leach, was awarded a doctorate in literature and folklore in 1961.

His dissertation, “Negro Folklore From South Philadelphia,” formed the basis of “Deep Down in the Jungle.” It also led to the creation of a separate department of folklore and folklife at the University of Pennsylvania.

“We cannot have a dissertation with such foul language in the English department,” Allan Chester, the chairman of the English department, told Leach. “If you want to approve it, go and have your own department.”

To better understand the African roots of African American folk practices and verbal styles, Mr. Abrahams did extensive field research in the Caribbean, beginning with a week on St. Kitts and Nevis in 1962. With ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, he recorded sea chanteys and the songs performed at tea meetings, a combination variety show and church fundraiser. After buying a house on Nevis, he went on to explore verbal styles throughout the islands in the Lesser Antilles.

His Caribbean studies were enshrined in the two-volume “Afro-American Folk Culture: An Annotated Bibliography of Materials from North, Central and South America, and the West Indies” (1977), and in “The Man-of-Words in the West Indies: Performance and the Emergence of Creole Culture” (1983), a study of Caribbean vernacular traditions.

Mr. Abrahams pursued his interest in black speech and street culture in the United States in several works that, like “Deep Down in the Jungle,” rejected the current argument that black Americans suffered not only from poverty but from a deficient culture. These included “Positively Black” (1970) and “Talking Black” (1976).

His interest in the humblest forms of social expression led him to produce two indispensable compendiums, “Jump-Rope Rhymes: A Dictionary” (1969) and “Counting-Out Rhymes: A Dictionary” (1980), edited with Lois Rankin.

Mr. Abrahams taught for many years in the English department of the University of Texas in Austin, where he also served as the director of the African and AfroAmerican Research Institute. In 1985 he joined the folklore and folklife department at the University of Pennsylvania. When the university eliminated the department in 1999, he was named the inaugural director of the university’s Center for Folklore and Ethnography. He retired in 2002.

Mr. Abrahams’ first two marriages ended in divorce. In addition to his son, he is survived by his wife, Janet Anderson Abrahams; a daughter, Lisa Abrahams; and a sister, Marjorie Slavin.

His many books included “Between the Living and the Dead: Riddles Which Tell Stories” (1980) and “Everyday Life: A Poetics of Vernacular Practices” (2005).