Monday Music: "Mary, Don't You Weep"

An article from Wikipedia describes this song as, a Negro spiritual that originates from before the American Civil War– thus it is what scholars call a "slave song," "a label that describes their origins among the enslaved," and it contains "coded messages of hope and resistance." It is one of the most important of Negro spirituals.

The song tells the Biblical story of Mary of Bethany and her distraught pleas to Jesus to raise her brother Lazarus from the dead. Other narratives relate to The Exodus and the Passage of the Red Sea, with the chorus proclaiming, “Pharaoh's army got drown-ded!”, and to God's rainbow covenant to Noah after the Great Flood. With liberation thus one of its themes, the song again become popular during the Civil Rights Movement.

The following video is from Dust-to-Digital:

Travel back to Augusta, Georgia in 1929:

A group of farm workers singing the spiritual, "Mary, Don't You Weep."

Thanks to the University of South Carolina for preserving this rare footage.

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Monday Music: Travelin' Shoes (Ruthie Foster)

The amazing Ruthie Foster with a live version of "Travelin' Shoes." The song, also called Death Came a-knockin', is an old Negro Spiritual. I heard this one first on Penny Nash's blog, One Cannot Have Too Large a Party.






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Monday Music: There Is a Balm in Gilead

I always find some inner conflict and incongruity when I recognize the beauty that can arise in the midst of sorrow, especially when that sorrow is inflicted by society. Nevertheless, it is a human trait to find strength and courage in the midst of hardship. Such is the beauty of this musical gift that comes to us from the African American heritage. "There Is A Balm in Gilead" is a well-known and well-loved Negro Spiritual. The text takes its origin from a cry of despair from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why, then, is there no healing for the wounds of my people?" (Jeremiah 8:22) Remarkably, the African American slaves turned the Old Testament prophet's cry of despair into a song hope, affirming that there is indeed a balm in Gilead.

[Note: This post originally appeared at The Music of the Spheres]