Power of Song narrative, by Nathan Smith

Sundays at 4 concert, Christ Episcopal Church

August 23, 2015

Perhaps the greatest gift of the African American people to the United States and indeed the whole
world has been their music especially their songs. The music nourished and sustained us in the United
States for over 350 years both as slaves and free persons. We learned to sing the Lords song in a foreign
land. The form of music most appropriate for us this morning is the spiritual. A spiritual may be defined
as the utterance of an African American person about an experience that had universal application at
whatever time that song was popular.
Spirituals were as native to my early years as the air I breathed and so I can safely say that my own
spiritual life is, to a great extent, the product of their nourishment. These beautiful songs are more than
simply folk songs. Expressed in them is a way of life, indeed a philosophy of life that one theologian has
called soul theology. He notes the African Americans ability to relax and move rhythmically comes from
feeling at home in their bodies largely free of Western cultures dualistic notions of the flesh and spirit
as being deeply antagonistic. (Henry, Mitchell, Dean of Theology, Virginia Union, Preface to Soul
Theology) Thus the spirituals deal with both the flesh and the spirit, the sacred and the secular. This
same primal acceptance of body and spirit as one is responsible for the African Americans greater
expression of feelings in public. This is augmented by long traditions of freedom to express emotion in
worship, with spirit possession (or shouting) prized rather than inhibited. African culture has for
centuries understood society as a literally extended family, sharing, despite desperate needs of its own.
The spirituals represent the conscious efforts of the slaves to make sense of their shattering of life
experiences. They represent the rare genius with which the slaves distilled the best from their own
traditions and blended it with the newly-found Hebrew-Christian tradition. In their songs, sometimes
called sorrow songs, the slaves tell in words, nuances and music, their struggles, weariness, loneliness,
sorrow, hope, determination, faith and assurance. Through these songs the slaves not only made noble
contributions to the religious, cultural, artistic and aesthetic life of Americans and the world, but also
gleaned from them the power they needed to sustain themselves under some of the cruelest conditions
in human history.
The spirituals are thought to be otherworldly by many, but they actually are encouched in biblical
imagery and figures of speech: the promised land, the Jordan River, the New Jerusalem, the sweet
chariot coming down, which were more reflective of the here and now than most people knew. These
images are more than the desire of the slaves for freedom and peace in the hereafter, they were also
the hardheaded longings for the God who would lead them to freedom on earth!! They were also pep
songs or morale builders. It was the creators of these songs that James Weldon Johnson paid tribute in
his poem, O Black and Unknown Bards. Let me share part of it with you as it states my case far more
eloquently than I will or can this morning.
O Black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrels lyre?
Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?
Who first from out the still watch, lone and long,

Power of Song narrative, by Nathan Smith

Sundays at 4 concert, Christ Episcopal Church
August 23, 2015
Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise
Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?

Heart of what slave poured out such melody

As Steal Away to Jesus? On its strains
His spirit must have nightly floated free,
Though still about his hands he felt his chains.
Who heard great Jordan roll? Whose starward eye
Saw chariot swing low? And who was he
That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh,
Nobody knows de trouble I see?

What merely living clod, what captive thing,

Could up toward God through all its darkness grope,
And find within its deadened heart to sing
These songs of sorrow, love, and faith, and hope?
How did it catch that subtle undertone,
That note in music heard not with the ears?
How sound the elusive reed, so seldom blown,
Which stirs the soul or melts the heart to tears?
Not that great German master in his dream
Of harmonies that thundered mongst the stars
At the creation, ever heard a theme
Nobler than Go down, Moses. Mark its bars,
How like a mighty trumpet-call they stir
The blood. Such are the notes that men have sung,
Going to valorous deeds; such tones there were
That helped make history when Time was young.
There is a wide, wide wonder in it all,
That from degraded rest and service toil
The fiery spirit of the seer should call
These simple children of the sun and soil.
O black slave singers, gone, forgot, unfamed,
Youyou alone, of all the long, long line
Of those whove sung untaught, unknown, unnamed,
Have stretched out upward, seeking the divine.
You sang not deeds of heroes or of kings;
No chant of bloody war, no exulting pan

Power of Song narrative, by Nathan Smith

Sundays at 4 concert, Christ Episcopal Church
August 23, 2015

Of arms-won triumphs; but your humble strings

You touched in chord with music empyrean.
You sang far better than you knew; the songs
That for your listeners hungry hearts sufficed
Still live,but more than this to you belongs:
You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ.

Despite some early debate over the nature of the Africans brought to the New World to work the land
taken from the Native Americans, most came to believe is that they were human albeit savage, heathen
and of a lower order of human than other persons. As human beings, they had souls to save. The Great
Awakening which swept over the United States beginning in the eighteenth century, with its great camp
meetings, probably resulted in the first great Christianizing effort among the slaves or servants as they
often were called.
I think sometimes in earlier times when a people were conquered, the vanquished may have believed
that the victors were favored by more powerful gods. If that is true, it might serve to explain, in part,
why the slaves so readily adopted the God of their masters. Certainly, if in fact, the God of their masters
was more powerful than their own, it made sense to adopt this God and to seek to use this God for their
own purposes. Whatever the reason, the slaves did adopt their masters God.
While I believe that many masters were truly concerned about the souls of their slaves, many others
used religion to help them exercise control over their slaves. Some encouraged religion as a type of
escape for their slaves from the troubles of this world while others used religion as a form of
indoctrination. In slave-attended churches with white pastors, a special cathecism was prepared for the
slaves.
Q. Who gave you a master and mistress?
A. God
Q. Who says that you must obey them?
A. The Bible
Some would argue that Biblical support for slavery is found in Ephesians, chapter 6.
The slaves were not so easily fooled. They saw something in the scriptures quite different from what
their masters intended. They took the golden nuggets of wisdom found there and fashioned the
spirituals.
The all-slave church gave birth to the spirituals with their apparent emphasis on a promised land in the
hereafter. They are susceptible to double meanings and undoubtedly many slaves interpreted the
language of the spirituals in a manner unsuspected by their white observers. They created their own

Power of Song narrative, by Nathan Smith

Sundays at 4 concert, Christ Episcopal Church
August 23, 2015

holistic world devoid of much of the sacred/secular delineation found in Western society. They
combined the sacred and the secular, the spiritual and the temporal.
Try for a moment to imagine yourselves not simply enslaved but cut off from all of the familiar things
that made up your environment. The gods seem to have forsaken you as they no longer answer your
prayers. The rulers are different and speak in foreign tongues. Ones is no longer free to play the roles
one formerly played in ones own society. One mates if, when and with whomever the master
designates. Even then, one learns that the master uses and controls both spouses as he sees fit as well
as any offspring the female produces. One is bought, sold, inherited, won, lost, branded and in general
treated as cattle. One works as one slave put, it from can see in the morning till cant see at night.
One may be flogged at will. One may be introduced to a new God and religion. In short, all of the
cultural underpinnings necessary for human existence as you have known it are gone. One is likely to be
fearful. One endeavors to survive.
Before they learned the new language, Im certain they hummed or sang in the old. Many times I have
seen my mother at her ironing board ironing the clothing of a rich person humming a mournful tune
with tears in her eyes. One does not have to know the words to get the feeling. In times of trouble which
we youngsters scarcely could comprehend, weve heard my father sing:
Im troubled
Oh yes Im troubled.
Im troubled, ina my soul.
If Jesus will go with me.
Ill follow him all the way.
In such a manner were the spirituals born, born but of the needs of the flesh and spirit. They helped our
foreparents sustain themselves through one of the most demoralizing periods in our New World
existence. And for those of us steeped in the lore and music, they sustain us still.
Many of the themes of spirituals are taken from the Old Testament. As you can imagine, they saw
themselves as latter day-Hebrews enslaved in a far off land. They took note of the omnipotence of God
observing how He parted the river to let the Israelites through while allowing it to engulf the Egyptians.
From that scripture they composed the spiritual, Go Down Moses.
The promised land, that land promised the Hebrews, the slaves took and fashioned other spirituals. The
promised land is ever just across a river. From that theme, the slaves composed, Roll Jordan Roll, O
Wasnt that a Wide River, Stand Still, Jordan, You Must Have That True Religion Or You Cant Cross
There, are some of the many slave songs that establish this motif.
For the slaves the deep river was symbolic of the great divide. It separated the world of slavery from the
world of freedom, his true home, his true selfhood, his personhood lay beyond the river of torture,
trails, tears and forced separation.

Power of Song narrative, by Nathan Smith

Sundays at 4 concert, Christ Episcopal Church
August 23, 2015

Some of the genius of the slave comes through in these songs. A slave could not expose to his master his
deep determination to be free. So he artfully disguised his ambition by making it appear that he was
only waiting for the chariot to swing low and carry him off to heaven. All slaves wanted to be carried
away from the world of slavery to the campground of freedom, but freedom first of all here on earth
and then freedom as a heavenly reward. This is the light in which you should listen to Deep River and
Swing Low Sweet Chariot.
Living beyond the boundaries of real, vital concern is sung about again and again in the spirituals,
perhaps because there are few experiences that more definitely can break ones spirit than the feeling
of being alone. This feeling of living outside the real sympathy and care of others was so characteristic of
slave life. Its reflected in the spiritual, Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.
Most spirituals are community songs. The slaves sought to console each other by saying that nobody
who had not lived under slavery could possibly know the trouble they knew. They were saying that no
one really could empathize with them, unless that person had walked the lonely and forsaken path with
them. They were also designed to convey a message to their masters even though they knew that their
pride, vanity, bigotry, lust and greed had rendered them impervious to their cries. So they sang,
Nobody Knows de Trouble I See.
Living under the conditions under which they lived, is it any wonder they might wish to steal away. One
can imagine a scene in which slaves are gathered around the bedside of one about to leave this world.
They might sing Steal Away. Some scholars believe Nat Turner convened his companions for his 1831
rebellion singing a song he had composed in 1825.
Jeremiah, the prophet, was brokenhearted because of the seemingly incurable state of his sin-sick
people. He turned to Gilead where precious balm could be found and to which physicians often resorted
for their medicines. Even there, he found no balm for the sin-sick souls, and so he cried out, Is there no
balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? The slaves turned this around and said there is a balm in
Gilead!!
It is interesting to note the unique way in which the singers spiritualized their struggles under the yoke
of slavery. They believed that their God was definitely involved in their struggles and yearnings for
freedom. Like Jacob, they felt lonely and forsaken, as they wandered in the valley of slavery; but yet like
Jacob, they knew they had encountered God along the weary and desolate way. They envisioned a
ladder let down to them from God, upon which they could climb.
They believed that God had extended a ladder of sure help for them, even in the midst of their darkest
night. Out of their black night of misery, fear, hurt and sorry, they could envision this heavenly ladder,
upon which ascended angels of mourning and prayer, and from which descended Gods hand of mercy
and healing. They felt themselves empowered by Gods gracious hand, and could thus say as they
strained upward, Evry round goes higher. By faith, they could look back and see that each round,
though bitterly contested, had led them ever higher. They sang We Are Climbing Jacobs Ladder, one
of the most moving songs of aspiration the slave singers bequeathed to the world.

Power of Song narrative, by Nathan Smith

Sundays at 4 concert, Christ Episcopal Church
August 23, 2015

African Americans traditionally testify. In that process they often confess sins, thank God for what Hes
done for them and seek his help on their faith journey. Talk About a Soul and I Want Jesus to Walk
With Me express that feeling in song.
Without a doubt, the New Testament character with which the slaves identified most was Jesus. They
marveled at his lowly birth, his lowly occupation and the fact that he came from a city so little revered
that one could say, Can any good come out of Nazareth? They identified with his struggles against the
powers and entrenched officials of His day. They knew how it felt to be misunderstood and punished for
crimes they did not commit. Sweet Little Jesus Boy is an expression of their understanding. They
visualized themselves playing the role of the crucified Christ and identified with all of the pain and
sorrow they knew He had endured. They knew what it meant to have officials wash their hands where
their well-being was concerned. One of several songs alluding to the crucifixion is I Think I Heard Him
Say.
Just as Christ emerged from all of His trials and tribulations triumphant, they had the faith that they too
would emerge victorious. They imagined what it would be like on Judgment Day and taking their cue
from Revelations, they sang, My Lord What a Mornin.
The slaves endured nearly 250 years of slavery without losing faith in the power and goodness of God. I
believe the power of song as exemplified by these spirituals enabled them to endure as indeed it has
enabled those of us born since slavery to endure, despite great odds. They did not have psychiatrists,
social workers or counselors to guide them through their troubles. They had only themselves, their God
and their songs.
They used their songs individually and collectively to ease their pain and suffering and to endure the
slings and arrows of fate while maintaining their faith. We too, if we choose, can use these songs to free
us from our modern trials and tribulations. The power is there. We have only to tap it. Let us pray.
Our father we thank you that you in our wisdom chose to reveal yourself to those slave singers of long
ago. Though untaught, unknown and unnamed they left us a rich heritage from which we can reach out
to you in song from the depths of our being and know that you hear and answer prayer. Teach us in our
turn to become the simple vessels you would have us be in order to receive the profound truths so often
hidden from us because of the hardness of our hearts. This we ask in Jesus name and for His sake,
Amen.