Easter is the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. In two different parts of the world in recent days, in France and the United States, we have witnessed the destruction by fire of churches. One is the towering Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, which captured global attention this last week.
Notre Dame is more than just a Catholic cathedral. It is a repository of art and history. As a former art history student, I visited Notre Dame when I was younger, and was awed by its grandeur.
There has been an outpouring of love, solidarity, and money from around the globe to ensure that she is resurrected from the ashes.
Here in the United States, however, we have a very different tragedy. There is a long, long history here of the burning of churches—black churches. In fires not sparked by accidents or renovation carelessness, they have been burned with malice, soaked with the fuel of racism, in hopes of sowing terror in the hearts and minds of communities of African-American worshipers.
Black churches have historically been the heart of the black community, from the time Africans were dragged to these shores in chains up until the present day. The irony of the attacks is that it was Christians who enslaved us and gave us their religion, and the core group of white supremacists uses a Christian cross as its symbol of white supremacy.
We, the descendants of the enslaved, have built no cathedrals. The majority of our churches are humble.
Our wealth is one of spirit. Our gift to the world is one of music.
African Americans built a cathedral of song.
On this Easter, we can repay, in a small way, that precious gift to the world, by aiding in the resurrection of those burned churches.
I admit I had an immediate negative response to a news story I came across that proclaimed Notre Dame “the birthplace of music as we know it today.” Yes, it gave birth to many luminaries of European music. And yes, European music traditions were utilized by enslaved black people in the New World, grafted onto and seamlessly blended into their own West African call-and-response forms and polyrhythms—imbued with a spirit that is now called “the Holy Ghost,” but bearing the mark of sacred West African orisha trance possession.
From humble beginnings in open-air gatherings, black Americans built churches where they could, and gathered when they could, not only to worship, but to teach reading and writing, and to provide families in need with assistance.
And they sang.
They sang to lift spirits. They sang to soothe wounds. They sang for courage. They sang for endurance. They sang to ward off hatred and they sang for love of God and family.
They sang for freedom.
Ethnomusicologist, civil rights activist, and founder of the Sweet Honey in the Rock vocal group Bernice Johnson Reagon wrote in the liner notes for her Smithsonian Folkways album Give Your Hands to Struggle about the significance of “The Old Ship of Zion.” This is an example of the unaccompanied music of the black Baptist rural tradition: It is associated with “the culture of the 19th century Underground Railroad.” She writes that “you can add as many verses as you like, about this image of a ship bringing hope and life, set against the memory of that other ship of slavery and death. The song has probably remained so important because of its connection to those of us who are living evidence of having survived that experience.”
I was lost in sin and sorrow
Tossed about on life’s raging sea
Then I saw so far in a distance
Twas a ship, seem to be.
Then I saw the Captain beckon
Savior-like, His hand to me.
‘Tis the old ship of Zion
Get on board, follow me.
What is hard for some people to understand is how people who face so many trials, tribulations, discrimination, and segregation, can sing of happiness. Without those songs that lift the spirit, we would never have survived.
There are many, many versions of “Oh Happy Day”—this duet between Aretha Franklin and Mavis Staples is one of my favorites.
FYI: As a side note, the Aretha Franklin documentary Amazing Grace is a must-see.
Speaking of “Amazing Grace,” it was almost too difficult to select a specific version of that hymn, written by John Newton, a former slave trader who became an abolitionist.
This version, by the Blind Boys of Alabama, has an interesting twist, since the lyrics are sung to the tune of “The House of the Rising Sun”—which gives it a Louisiana connection. Clarence Fountain, one of the original founders of the singing group, passed on in 1998.
In 1994 the Blind Boys received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Their “Spirit of the Century” won the 2001 Grammy for best traditional gospel album, and they went on to win four more Grammys before receiving a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy in 2009.
"Oh, Mary Don't You Weep," which has layers of meaning, is a black church standard.
An expression of Christian hope and subversion originating during a tragic time in America’s past, “Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep” ties African American experience to the Bible’s two most triumphant stories of deliverance: the Exodus and the Resurrection. Slaves gained empowerment through these stories, from the witness of those saints of old who rallied around them as historical turning points. As they recalled these stories in song, they readied themselves to experience a liberation of their own, a movement from death to life.
It became the signature song for Sister Inez Andrews.
Birmingham-born vocalist Inez Andrews was known as “the High Priestess” of gospel music. Shirley Caesar (who sang alongside her in the Caravans during the late ’50s and early to mid-’60s) gave her the title because of the chilling high notes and spirit-filled sermonettes she frequently interjected into her songs. “Andrews’ throaty contralto made her low notes thunder, while the enormous range of her instrument enabled her to reach stratospheric pitches without falsetto,” Chicago Tribune arts critic Howard Reich observed. “Her dramatic delivery made her a charismatic presence in church and on stage.”
“Beginning in a demure, almost school-marmish contralto, Inez will zoom, with dramatically calibrated focus, higher and yet higher,” gospel historian Anthony Heilbut wrote. “Sometimes as the church folk stared back at her astonished, she would appear to pluck notes out of the air.”
She was born Inez McConico in 1929. From the age of two, when her mother died, her coal-miner father and other relatives raised her. Inez married Robert Andrews at age 18 and worked as a domestic six days a week, ten hours a day, for a weekly total of $18 to help support their two young daughters. She was soon singing with Carter’s Choral Ensemble, the Raymond Rasberry Singers and the Gospel Harmonettes, with whom she occasionally filled in for the lead singer Dorothy Love Coates. James Cleveland, pianist for the Caravans, heard her with the Harmonettes in Nashville and recommended her to the Chicago group. Andrews moved to Chicago after joining the Caravans and gave the group its first major hit in 1958 with her intense, six-minute-plus treatment of the church standard Mary Don’t You Weep on Savoy Records. It became her signature song.
For this Easter Sunday, from the album Finale: Act Two, give a listen to this amazing performance of “Matthew 28” by Donald Lawrence and the Tri-City Singers, which celebrates the Resurrection.
One of the most popular Gospel choirs of the 1990s, Donald Lawrence and The Tri City Singers also managed to make waves with the secular media similar to a handful of other Christian acts during the decade. But the success could not have been possible without several key individuals working behind the scenes, lending their talents to launch one of today’s premier Gospel music groups.
Perhaps most visible was producer, songwriter and musical director Donald Lawrence, who also performs with the group. Born with a love for music, Donald Lawrence earned a Bachelor Of Fine Arts Degree from the prestigious Cincinnati Conservatory. His list of accolades is a long one, including musical director for Stephanie Mills; vocal coach for the popular group En Vogue; songwriter for the Clark Sisters and the Gospel Workshop of America; and producer for Peabo Bryson, Kirk Franklin and others...Donald contributes his extensive mainstream music experience to Tri-City Singers, a 34-member choir who represent three distinctive areas in North Carolina: Spartanburg, South Carolina, Gastonia and Charlotte, North Carolina. Among the many Gospel choirs that existed today ,the group has become known for its quality of music much to the credit of Lawrence.
The choir ‘s final album was aptly titled Finale.
Hallelujah!
The biblical passage at Matthew 28 speaks of the Resurrection.
Gospel music from the black American community has given rise to blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock and roll, hip-hop, and rap.
Our cathedral of song has been a gift to the world.
Giving thanks today for those people who have given back by donating to the fund for the rebuilding of the burned churches of Louisiana.
The coming-together of people of all backgrounds and faiths, atheists and agnostics, to undertake this task is truly something to sing about.
