Post on 01-May-2023
Text and Tune are from the Cameroon, collected by John Bell at a wedding in Frankfurt in 1986. Published by WGRG, Iona Community ©1986Glory to God (2013) 137
Gather, 3rd ed. (2011) 298©1945, Boosey & Co.Acc. Robert Batastini ©1993, GIA Publications, Inc.
Collected by Edric Connor (1913-1968) and published in The Edric Connor Collection of West Indian Spiritual and Folk Tunes, ©1945, Boosey & Hawkes
A 93 yr old Trinidadian sang it for Connor, saying his father had sung the song to him.
Old Plantation Songs: A Collection of Hitherto Unpublished Songs of the Slave, by William Eleazar Barton, 1899
Barton (1861-1930) was a Congregationalist minister and prolific author and lecturer on Abraham Lincoln. Lecturer at Vanderbilt and pastor of Collegeside Congregational Church.
“I know little of music, and can say nothing in technical phrase, but I know something of men, and knowing them, I know that these songs are the articulate message of the slave to the world”
The Soul of Black Folks by W.E.B. DuBois
Chicago: A.C. McClurg. 1903
“Through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things. The minor cadences of despair change often to triumph and calm confidence."-- Chapter XIV Sorrow Songs
Frederick Douglass: An American Slave written by HimselfBoston: Anti-Slavery Office. 1845
"I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception.”
For Further Study
▪ Lining Out the Word: Dr. Watts Hymn Singing in the Music of Black America. By William T. Dargan. ©2006 Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN: 9780520234482
▪ Pennsylvania Spirituals. By Don Yoder ©1961. Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates. Out-of-Print. Available used: www.abebooks.com
▪ A Conjoining of Ancient Song. By Willie Ruff and Gretchen Berland. ©2013 Yale Institute of Sacred Music. https://vimeo.com/82304757
▪ The Language You Cry In. Alvaro Toepke and Angel Serrano, Producers.©1998 www.newsreel.org