The Herskovitses begin with the distinctions the Black population of Paramaribo draws among itself: town people, plantation people, and the "Djuka" of the deep interior — categories at once geographical and racial, shading into finer gradings of colour, status and residence, and set among neighbours of Dutch, Indian, Javanese, Chinese and Amerindian descent.

The opening part describes daily life in the city: the dress of the koto-missi, the proverbs encoded in the patterns and tyings of head-kerchiefs, the compound yard, courtship, marriage and divorce, birth customs and their dangers, and the akra — the ruling spirit that comes to a person at birth and shields them from enemies human and divine.

The volume then collects tales, riddles and several hundred songs, sacred and secular, transcribed and analysed at length for scale, interval, rhythm and vocal form, with the drums described individually and Haitian material included for comparison.