Introduction to Lesson 12 (Continued)
Also, in this same period, Black musicians invented an array of techniques that closely allowed instruments to emulate the human voice sound. Earlier in this course, we heard an African griot with the talking drum that achieved the same effect as in the following video:
James Shorty And Fred McDowell - I Want Jesus To Walk With Me [ 00:00-00:00 ]
Note how the guitar is played in such a manner that employs bent notes, glides, and other features of the voice. Additionally, the technique of plucking the strings and adding vibrato to the pitch, the use of flattened tones, and grace notes are all tropes related to the blues. Therefore, this song is a prime example of the elements of the blues that were incorporated into the landscape of gospel music.
In the songs of the enslaved of the previous century, we also see a musical expression produced by circumstance. Vincent Gordon Harding (1931-2014) was an African American historian and a scholar on various topics focusing on American religion and society. In the introduction to There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America, he writes:
Somewhere in the heart of the work is a search for meaning, an attempt to apprehend… How in the midst of such deaths and suffering could we find so much strength to love, so much determination to live, to fight on, and be free? In permanent and grueling exile, how could a people dance and create songs and art, fashion institutions of hope…? And what is our future, and this nation's destiny, if those costly, creative Black visions of hope, long nurtured in the fires of persecution, should be broken and bastardized-or meanly forgotten-in a ruthless and unprincipled process of Americanization? (Harding 1981, 11-12)
As Harding argues, it was indeed the religious beliefs, the traditional essence of rhythm, song, body movement, and the cathartic expressions of the African American community that sustained them through such a plight. Often referred to as the Black community, the church always stood at its center. Dawning the twentieth century, the Black church can be seen as having three primary denominations-Methodist, Baptist, and Pentecostal-each possessing their own musical styles and religious practices.
Leave It There
If the world from you withhold of its silver and its gold,
And you have to get along with meager fare,
Just remember, in His Word, how He feeds the little bird,
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.
Leave it there, leave it there,
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.
If you trust and never doubt,
He will surely bring you out,
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.
Stand By Me
When the storms of life are raging
Stand by me
When the storms of life are raging
Stand by me
When the world is tossing me
Like a ship out on the sea
Thou who rulest wind and water
Stand by me