Part III:
For years now, Kwanzaa has been supported as a way to bring African American tradition into the Christmas celebration. However, what is severely lacking in Kwanzaa is the Christian legacy of African American Christmas celebration. This “mini-series” of blogs will explore the legacy of African American Christian Christmas Celebration.
Mutual Ministry through Slave Spirituals
Too often we see the spirituals simply as words and notes on a printed page. We forget that they emerged as communal songs which were heard, felt, sung, shouted, and often danced with great meaning.[1]
To appreciate the meaning, message, and mutual ministry of the slave spirituals, it is essential that we understand how and why they were composed. Carey Davenport, a retired black Methodist minister from Texas, had been born enslaved in 1855. He vividly depicts the spontaneous nature of slave spirituals. “Sometimes the slaves went down in dugouts and hollows and held their own service and they used to sing songs that come a-gushing up from the heart.”[2]
These were not polished, practiced anthems designed to entertain. They were personal, powerful psalms designed to sustain. “Songs were not carefully composed and copyrighted as they are today; they were ‘raised’ by anyone who had a song in their hearts.”[3]
Slave spirituals were shared songs composed on the spot to empathize with and encourage real people in real trouble. Anderson Edwards, a slave preacher, remembers, “We didn’t have song books and the Lord gave us our songs and when we sang them at night it just whispering so nobody heard us.”[4]
The creation of individual slave spirituals poignantly portrays soul care-giving at its best. When James McKim asked a slave the origin of a particular spiritual, the slave explained, “I’ll tell you; it’s this way. My master call ordered me a hundred lashes. My friends see it and are sorry for me. When they come to the praise meeting that night they sing about it. Some’s very good singers and know how; and they work it in, work it in, you know; till they get it right; and that’s the way.”[5] Spirituals were born from slaves observing and empathizing with the suffering of their fellow slaves as a way of demonstrating identification and solidarity with the wronged slave.[6]
Go Tell It on the Mountain
It is in this context that Linda McDonnell describes the spontaneous composition of “Go Tell It on the Mountain.”[7] The author is unknown but the song was passed from generation to generation. “Go tell it on the mountain, Over the hills and everywhere, Go tell it on the mountain, Our Jesus Christ is born.”
It might have been lost, according to McDonnell, if not for the work of an African American church choir director from Nashville named John Wesley Work. “Shortly after the Civil War, Work, began gathering the songs of the former slaves as a way of helping his congregants understand their ancestors. Work’s collections soon made their way to nearby Fisk College, where the Fisk Jubilee Singers were touring the world with their arrangements of African American spirituals. Work’s son and grandson followed him as collectors of Black spirituals, as well as musicians in their own right. The Works are credited with saving hundreds of African American spirituals, including “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” from being lost. With the help of Work’s brother Frederick, John Work II arranged “Go Tell It on the Mountain” for the Fisk Jubilee Singers. When the Fisk choir debuted the song in 1880, audiences around the world were brought to tears. In 1909 it was published in a book of Black spirituals by Thomas P. Fenner. The musical version we know today was arranged by John Work III and published in 1940.”
And now you know, the rest of the story.
[1]Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering, p. 147; Raboteau, Slave Religion, p. 243.
[2]Rawick, From Sundown to Sunup, p. 34, emphasis added.
[3]Holmes, Joy Unspeakable, p. 109.
[4]Rawick, The American Slave, vol. 4, Texas, pt. 2, pp. 6-7.
[5]McKim, “Negro Songs,” in Katz, The Social Implications of Early Negro Music, p. 2.
[6]Goatley, “Godforsakenness in African American Spirituals,” in Hopkins, Cut Loose Your Stammering Tongue, p. 132.
[7]McDonnel, “The History of Go Tell It on the Mountain, December 15, 2008.
