All 3 Uses of
debase
in
The Souls of Black Folk
- The mass of "gospel" hymns which has swept through American churches and well-nigh ruined our sense of song consists largely of debased imitations of Negro melodies made by ears that caught the jingle but not the music, the body but not the soul, of the Jubilee songs.†
Chpt 10debased = degrade (decreased) the purity, quality, or status of something
- Caricature has sought again to spoil the quaint beauty of the music, and has filled the air with many debased melodies which vulgar ears scarce know from the real.†
Chpt 14 *
- Side by side, too, with the growth has gone the debasements and imitations—the Negro "minstrel" songs, many of the "gospel" hymns, and some of the contemporary "coon" songs,—a mass of music in which the novice may easily lose himself and never find the real Negro melodies.†
Chpt 14
Definition:
to degrade (decrease) the purity, quality, or status of something -- often morality or metals