"Slave Quarters, Louisiana 1861-65" by Adolf Carlsson Warberg
Some of you may or may not have seen my other series I’ve been posting about “Whiskey and Blues” which is a true story of a Delta Blues inspired playlist I put together specifically to accompany a rare bottle of bourbon I was lucky enough to be able to buy.
Suffice it to say: I am a Blues fan, a fan of the music and the culture and the club scene and the artists and the history and all the sentiments expressed in song. All of it.
As such, my path has criss-crossed over so many historical Negro Spirituals and someone actually posted one in the comments of one of my diaries, which we’ll get to before we’re done here. Lately I’ve been sifting through my music to seek them out and thought I’d write something up specific to them. ….and no whiskey this time. For once. (begrudgingly) ;-)
Now, I am a 41 year old white guy from Baltimore and the second generation of Lithuanian immigrants. I don’t have any personal stories about the American South, pre- or post-civil war. Nor was my family active in the Civil Rights Movement so I’m not going to try and play some retroactive white-guy black-cred card about how some relative marched with MLK. Oh, and I was raised as a Catholic but left at the age of 13 refusing to accept confirmation in a religion in which I did not believe, so I don’t even know these songs from church.
I am coming at this purely from the perspective of a fan and student of American Music and I want to showcase modern artists still channeling these living pieces of American History to demonstrate that these songs have transcended the church pews and slave fields and are still intricately woven through the warp and weave of American music right up to today’s artists.
Through the forced, or at best coerced, conversion of African slaves to Christianity, the early slaves found resonance in the biblical suffering of Moses and the Israelites as well as the ever-promised salvation of heaven after the brutal hardships of mortal life, and what mortal life is more brutal than that of owned chattel?
At one time white scholars attempted to negate the special role that Spirituals played to the slaves by suggesting, with facile scholarly citations, that all of their references to freedom were merely the “freedom from sin” and that the “suffering” was the suffering of the mortal world and held no deeper or different meaning then when white people sang the same hymns.
But this is silly to the point of being insulting, both to the suffering of the countless and to the intelligence of the person that is expected to believe it.
Frederick Douglass, a Maryland slave himself until the age of 20, tells us in his own words
I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw or heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the 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 spirits, and filled my heart with ineffable sadness. The mere recurrence, even now, afflicts my spirit, and while I am writing these lines, my tears are falling. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conceptions of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds
There are many studies and examples of the songs including “coded messages” guiding slaves on how to escape to freedom (such as “Gospel Train” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”), but much more common is not so much a secret language but rather a communally understood set of symbols. The “promised land” was understood to be the North where they could be free. “Heaven” was a theoretical place where they could have a peaceful home with their family. References to seeing family in heaven were hopes of reuniting a family that was shattered by the auction block. And the oft-cited River Jordan held dual symbolism. First it was the symbol of death, specifically death as a final escape from slavery so “crossing the Jordan” was a reference to dying. Second, it was the great symbolic border, not just between life and death, but heaven and earth, north and south, slavery and freedom. It is where Moses crossed to the Promised Land. It is where Jesus was baptized by John. It is the ultimate goal and the final obstacle to escape...from slavery, from life, from sin, from suffering, from pain, from everything.
Here is a short clip from the movie 12 Years a Slave showing the simple vocalization, with no instruments or music, of how short repetitive songs, like Roll Jordan Roll, become a communal exercise of faith and hope.
Easily one of the most recognizable spirituals, it was written by a Methodist preacher back in the 1700’s and was the very first song recorded in the 1864 book Slave Songs of the United States, a collection of songs and sheet music published by Northern abolitionists.
Here is John Legend performing the full song, from the soundtrack of the same film.
Next we go from the field to the Church house where we find not a small group clapping and singing but rather true Gospel music accompanied by instruments, church organ chords and the unique sweeping acoustics of the wide open church.
Willie Mae Ford Smith, or simply “Mother Smith” to those lucky enough to have known her and those fortunate enough to have heard her sing was discovered as a young child singing with her sisters at the National Baptist Convention of 1922. Willie Mae is one of the pioneers of what we all now recognize as Gospel Music, particularly the style of mixing in direct preaching between the versus. In 1931 she helped found the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses.
She served as the Director of Education for the National Baptist Convention but left that church to join COGIC, the Church of God in Christ (the largest Pentecostal church in the US).
Mother Smith was famous for taking simple hymns or even parts of songs and reshaping and reworking them into soulful pieces of music. Here she is singing the old hymn “What Manner of Man is This?”, the line taken directly from the Gospels of Mark, Luke and Matthew that the men on the boat exclaim when they witness Jesus calm the seas in a storm.
We lost Willie Mae Ford Smith in St. Louis in 1994. Now, I am an atheist but if you ask any devout member of the COGIC they will tell you without a doubt that there is a heaven. And that if there is a heaven then in it there must be music. If they are right and I am wrong (and part of me hopes they are) then we can be assured that somewhere Mother Smith is still singing.
But the idea that Negro Spirituals are still sung in churches, particularly in historically black churches, should come as a surprise to no one. This could be true purely as a vestigial holdover to past generations and regional traditions. These songs would still be worthy of study and praise, but they would be more of a niche contributor to a wider story.
But this is simply not the case.
As southern music crept out of the South and out of the Church and began to influence other genres, these songs migrated right along with them.
Bluegrass formed in Appalachia and originally was more influenced by old Irish and Scottish ballads or English country songs, but as the Southern influence spread the Christian slave songs were co-opted right into the reels and dirges of the Appalachian people.
Elephant Revival is a Colorado-based folk group that does everything from Bluegrass to Reggae, but here we can see them perform Wade in the Water. This song was fist recorded in 1901 but goes back much further. The title and chorus references the passage from the Book of John: "For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had."
Here we see some evidence of the coded language as this is considered to be a song of the Underground Railroad and “Wade in the Water” is an explicit instruction on how to escape tracking dogs.
(You just have get past the opening 20 seconds of this clip)
The final purely a cappella verse makes it clear this could be (and no doubt was) sung just as we saw “Roll Jordan Roll” above simply by people gathered around together but it loses none of its passion and message when accompanied Bluegrass-style by banjo, fiddle and washboard.
Note: The cello-player in that clip is not actually part of the band Elephant Revival. That’s Layla McCalla the Haitian-American songstress from New Orleans that sings English, French, Creole and Cajun songs and put out an AMAZING “Vari-Colored Songs: Tribute to Langston Hughes” album. (London Sunday Times’ 2013 Album of the Year!) She is coming to Berkeley in October for a 1-night show….and yes… I already have my ticket purchased! (Spirituals aside, watch her absolutely KILL this Haitian folk song, but I digress...)
And if we can find Negro Spirituals ringing true in Bluegrass, then you can bet your last Mississippi Delta dollar that we can find them in the Blues.
Now aside from a cursory education of Black History, I really learned about the notion of Negro Spirituals through the Blues. In the early days, religious songs formed the foundation of rural blues music (as well as country and bluegrass for that matter). Equally important was that actual MUSCIANSHIP often stemmed back to religion in those days because playing or singing for the local country church was how many of the people we now view as pioneers and legends of Roots music first learned their craft.
The Blues are the direct descendant of Southern Black Church Music and singing what we now think of pioneering Delta Blues was actually considered to be almost sacrilegious. Artists that took their singing or instrumental skills and started singing these secular songs for entertainment (often in dodgy venues of drinking, gambling and sin) were considered to have “sold their soul to the devil”.
And while you don’t need me to tell you that a lot of early blues songs have to do with drinking, women, killing and lawlessness… the fact is that these artists brought with them plenty of the old Spirituals they learned when they were young.
John the Revelator is a textbook example of old call-and-response gospel songs. (Typically, the whole band and/or the audience would all sing “John the Revelator” after every “Tell me who’s that riding?” question) Blind Willie Johnson is credited with the first recording of this song in 1930 and was then famously covered by Founding Delta Blues LEGEND Son House in 1960 and is considered a bedrock song of anyone that has the nerve to call themselves a Blues musician.
But historians document this song being sung by slaves in the pre-Civil war era. It is about John the Apostle, also known as John of Patmos (an island of Greece) who is considered to be the author of the Book of Revelations which describes the End Times through the opening of The Seven Seals. In spiritual symbolism, the End of Days was the End of Slavery, either through a form of salvation, such as Emancipation, or through Death, the ultimate escape.
There are literally hundreds of versions of this song, but I’m going with a heavily instrumented one from Government Mule, a current jam band formed and fronted by Warren Haynes of the Allman Brothers and here accompanied with The Dirty Dozen Brass Band one of my favorite New Orleans brass ensembles that has been performing since the late 70’s.
Now Spirituals certainly began in the days of slavery, but they didn’t end there. New songs were still written and sung long after the Civil War. O Freedom, was never sung by actual slaves. It was written after the war but still shows the dual messaging and overlap of Christian Salvation and Emancipation.
It is a celebration of new rights and talks about how these newfound free people will die before ever going back into chains.
Oh freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom over me
And before I'd be a slave I'll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free
No more moaning, no more moaning, no more moaning over me
And before I'd be a slave I'll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free
Early versions also included a verse about “No more Tommin’ “ a contemporaneous reference to the notion of “Uncle Tom” and the debasing stance and posture black men had to take to appease their white masters. ….that verse isn’t sung very much anymore.
This song resurged and rang just as true in the Civil Rights Movement as it did in the post Civil War Era. Odetta (the woman MLK dubbed “The Queen of American Folk Music”) is famous for the version she recorded as part of her “Spiritual Trilogy” and Joan Baez famously sung this song and led the crowd through repeating versions of it at King’s 1963 March on Washington.
In 1964, marchers protesting the racist policies of Barry Goldwater’s campaign often changed the lyrics to "And before I'd be a slave, I'll see Barry in his grave and go fight for my rights and be free."
But, we’ll leave these more famous versions aside. We covered bluegrass, blues and gospel music. So how about an opera singer?
Miss Shirley Verrett was an acclaimed African-American mezzo-soprano/soprano opera singer. Started singing in church in New Orleans and ended up a Julliard trained soloist famous for her performances of almost the entire oeuvre of Verdi’s works. She sang in the very first televised performance from the Lincoln Center and eventually taught as a Professor of Voice and the James Earl Jones Professor of Music at the University of Michigan. Late in life Miss Verrett published her memoirs titled: I Never Walked Alone, and recounted the pernicious racism she fought throughout the classical musical world and industry.
But her version of O Freedom is triumphant. Here she is:
And that brings us to the two songs I want to close with. First, full props and credit to TexasTwister, the kossack that linked this video in one of my Blues blogs. I’m not sure it fits the vibe I was going for in that slow whiskey-drinking playlist but I was nonetheless BLOWN AWAY by the performance.
Where to begin? First the song: Mary Don’t You Weep is a pre-war Negro Spiritual that through the versus tells the story of Mary of Bethany who wept that Jesus did not arrive in time to help her sick brother Lazarus. Meanwhile, the chorus of “Pharaoh’s army got drownded” is a reference to Moses allowing the Red Sea to close back in while the Egyptian army was crossing in pursuit.
This was sung by slaves throughout the South as a song of resistance and hope for retribution against their slave masters. It came back to prominence in the Civil Rights movement and then one of the great anthems of the movement “If You Miss Me From the Back of the Bus” was written by Charles Nesbitt to the tune of Mary Don’t You Weep.
Now, the singer: Theresa Andersson is Swedish, former wife of Anders Osborne and both of them now live in New Orleans. Anders is now a cutting-edge bluesman and considered one of today’s best guitar players of the genre. Theresa stays much more local to the city and does her own thing. This couple are artists from small villages in Sweden that were inspired by American Soul and Blues music and came to New Orleans and started making it.
In this video we see Theresa demonstrate “live-looping” which NEVER ceases to amaze me. All of the music, rhythm, layers, and accompanying vocals that you are about to hear are all her. She performs each piece and records the segment live and then has a computer loop it back for her in real time while she moves on to layer another recording on top of it and so on. She uses her bare feet to control the pedals that start, stop, synch and merge the recorded bits to generate this “full band” sound as part of the performance. Nothing is prerecorded… she does it all live bit by bit with impeccable timing, true musicianship, and an amazing ear for the song.
So now allow me to show you a young Swedish woman performing in a historic blues venue using state of the art technology to sing a song originally sung by American slaves. If that doesn’t demonstrate the enduring legacy of this music, well then I don’t know what will.
Oh, and if you don’t love that half-smile that creeps onto her face at the 2:09 mark while she riffs over her own chorus and is about to put that fiddle on her chin for her solo, well…. then don’t read my blogs anymore because we clearly don’t have the same views on music. ;-)
This song was the biggest hit of The Swan Silvertones in 1959 and their very 50’s-ish version is now cataloged in the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry that honors songs for their "cultural, artistic and/or historical significance to American society and the nation’s audio legacy"
And now I’ll close with what is probably the most well-known Negro Spiritual of them all, and very few people know it as such.
The first known recording was 1923 by the Paramount Jubilee Singers and re-recorded by dozens if not hundreds of musicians including the version from May 13, 1938 when Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra recorded his jazz rendition of it and the rest became history.
When the Saints Go Marching In, thanks to Mr. Armstrong and his trumpet, has become the anthem of New Orleans and a song associated with dancing in the street, celebrating, jazz funerals, and any other occasion when its time to Laissez les Bon Temps Roulez!!
But the early pre-jazz versions by the likes of Bo Weavil Jackson and Blind Willie Davis were slow and somber renditions. The song, like John the Revelator from earlier, is about the End of Days. Most versions reference specific events from the Book of Revelations: “When the moon turns red with blood” and “When the stars fall from the sky” and “When the horsemen begin to ride”, and so forth And again, the symbols overlap with dual meanings.
The arrival of the Day of Judgment is when we all leave this mortal world of suffering and the saved are ushered into heaven. You better hope you are “in their number” at that point because the alternative is not pleasant. Barring any other escape to freedom, this was the best hope of the chained slave.
So just to step outside of the normal versions we’ve all heard, here is none other than Bruce Springsteen performing with his Seeger Sessions Band going back to the song’s true roots.
Listen to the crowd when it realizes that it knows this most-famous of songs after Bruce’s first verse and tries to sing along with the chorus. They want to sing it like we all know it. Like its a street parade and someone is about to break out a trombone or something, but Bruce just keeps going.
By the time Marc Anthony Thompson (a.k.a Chocolate Genius) starts the second verse about the Sun refusing to shine, they get it that they are in for something different and sit back to enjoy it.
Here… now you do the same:
I’ll end it there, but for those that do want to go out on a nice jazzy New Orleans brass song like The Saints is so often done, well the Crescent City’s living legend Dr. John teams up with none other than Miss Mavis Staples and the same Dirty Dozen Brass Band referenced above to deliver on the timeless Glory, Glory (Lay My Burden Down). That should give you the fix your looking for. ;-)
