Musical arts – Page 8 – Yet Another Unitarian Universalist

“We’ll Stand the Storm”

Here’s a wonderful sacred song from the 1873 edition of the Fisk Jubilee Singers’ songbook:

This song comes from the 1872 edition of Jubilee Songs: as sung by the Jubilee Singers, of Fisk University (New York: Bigelow & Main, 1872). It’s characteristic of the best arrangements of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, with unison singing on the verses, followed by simple but effective four-part harmonies on the refrains. It’s possible to teach this kind of simple arrangement to an entire congregation, with not too much effort (though you have to be intentional about it).

The first verse is from the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The second verse is mine, and it is modeled after verses for older sacred songs that were created by the mid-20th C. Civil Rights Movement.

Click here for permissions and more about the 50 American Sacred Songs project.

UU history trivia

Rev. Felix Danforth Lion was the first settled minister of the Palo Alto Unitarian Church in 1947. His daughter-in-law just stopped by to donate his doctoral robes to us, and while she was here she happened to mention that Dan Lion (as he was known then) officiated at the California wedding of folk musicians Richard Farina and Mimi Baez.

This wedding, in the summer of 1963, would have been the second ceremony for Mimi and Richard. They had married secretly in Paris in April, 1963. Mimi was only 18, and reportedly her parents didn’t like the fact that she had married an older man, a man who had been married when she met him at age 16. But it is not clear to me why Dan Lion performed this second marriage ceremony. The Baez family had raised their daughters as Quakers, so why get a Unitarian minister?

(Coincidentally, on Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, we’ll be singing a Mimi Farina’s tune for “Bread and Roses” at the 9:30 service.)

What I did with my Saturday

“The punk rock of choral music” — that’s what some people call Sacred Harp singing. It’s loud, highly rhythmic, often with fast tempi. And that’s what I did with my Saturday: I went to an all-day Sacred Harp singing. We sang nearly 90 songs out of a tunebook called The Sacred Harp, including a tune called “Rainbow,” originally composed in 1785 by Timothy Swan:

And this one, called Zion, composed in 1959:

Like punk rock, this is music that can be cathartic, ecstatic, raucous. Or just plain fun.

“Down to the Valley To Pray”

The first known publication of “Down to the Valley To Pray” was in 1867, under the title “The Good Old Way,” in the book Slave Songs of the United States, ed. William F. Allen, Lucy M. White, and Charles P. Ware. In 1872, the Fisk Jubilee Singers included a different version of the melody in their songbook, under the title “The Good Old Way. In the mid-twentieth century, Leadbelly sang it for a Library of Congress recording

The song has also been taken up by white country and bluegrass singers. Flatt and Scruggs played it now and then, and Doc Watson did a lovely recording. In 2000, Alison Kraus popularized the song under the title “Down in the River To Pray,” which was part of the soundtrack to the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou.”

For this version, I went back to the words and melody recorded in 1867. The melody begins and ends on the dominant, not the tonic, and both white and black musicians have sometimes emphasized that musically ambiguous ending; the final chord for this arrangement is D5 (dominant), not G (tonic).

Down In the Valley To Pray (PDF, 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 in. for order of service inserts)

Performance notes: Because this song is so widely sung, you can safely sing it any way you want: blues, country, gospel, bluegrass, R & B, rock ‘n’ roll. Punk rock version, anyone? Or how about a hip hop version, with samples of Leadbelly’s classic rendition?

“Sioux Love Song”

One of the problems you run into when looking for copyright-free sacred songs is that most of the public domain songs out there are Anglo-American or African American, and Christian. That being the case, I’m willing to stretch the definition of “sacred song” quite a bit to include songs on even vaguely spiritual topics. Thus this lovely Sioux chant counts as a sacred song because of the English translation: “Brother-in-law, walk straight forward, I will try to follow you”: I’m willing to consider that a song about moral integrity, and staying in community.

Sioux Love Song (PDF), sized for order of service insert (5-1/2 x 8-1/2 in.)

Historical background: Gen. Samuel Armstrong Chapman founded Hampton Institute to educate newly freed African Americans; perhaps the best know Hampton graduate was Booker T. Washington. Armstrong also aimed to “civilize” Native Americans, that is, have them adopt Anglo-American culture. Thus when by Thomas P. Fenner, Bessie Cleaveland, and Frederic G. Rathbun put together Cabin and Plantation Songs, as Sung the the Hampton Students in 1901, the bulk of the music was African American spirituals, but there were also a handful of Native American songs.

Performance notes: About the three Sioux songs in the book, one the editors of Cabin and Plantation Songs wrote: “I have indicated as far as possible the actual tones of the above songs. It is impossible to put into notation the literal manner in which they are sung, as it depends entirely on the singer to change as his fancy dictates.” Thus the songs should be really sung in unison (i.e., with no accompaniment) to allow for this kind of improvisation — but the average congregation will probably find it easier to sing with some kind of accompaniment.

In a more formal worship service, it’s probably enough to sing the song through three times, maybe the second time through trying to sing the transliterated Sioux words. In less formal circle worship, you could sing it till you fall into a trance.

“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”

“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” is a classic spiritual song from the African American tradition. It may have been composed by Minerva and Wallace Willis. Here are two arrangements of this song.

The first arrangement is by the Fisk Jubilee Singers. They published their arrangement in The Story of the Jubilee Singers: With Their Songs (New York: Biglow & Main, 1872). Notice that their arrangement has the first note (“Swing…”) sung on the downbeat; this is different from a common contemporary interpretation of the song where the first note is a pickup measure. The original arrangement of the Fisk Jubilee singers had a fermata over the second note of the opening phrase (“…low…”), and again later where the word “low” is sung; I have omitted the fermata, both because it may confuse congregational singing, and to make this arrangement more consistent with the next arrangement.

Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Fisk Jubilee Singers (PDF, 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 in. for order of service inserts)

The next arrangement is derived from Harry T. Burleigh’s 1918 arrangement of this song for piano and low voice. Burleigh was arguably the first great African American composer of art music; he studied with Dvorak, and helped introduce Dvorak to American folk music. One of the verses and one of the choruses of Burleigh’s piano accompaniment can be easily and logically transcribed for SATB choir, as in the following arrangement.

Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Harry T. Burleigh (PDF, 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 in. for order of service inserts)

Continue reading ““Swing Low, Sweet Chariot””

“Go Down, Moses”

“Go Down, Moses” is a classic spiritual song from the African American tradition. The earliest known publication was in 1862, in an arrangement derived from a song sung by escaped slaves.

This arrangement comes from the Fisk University Jubilee Singers, perhaps the first African American musical ensemble to tour internationally. They published their arrangement in The Story of the Jubilee Singers: With Their Songs (New York: Biglow & Main, 1872). Their version has 24 verses, telling how Moses led the Israelites to freedom (Exodus 12:29 through Exodus 14 in the Hebrew Bible); other verses mention other matters outside of this basic story. See Historical Background below for how this sacred song has been used as a song of freedom.

Go Down, Moses (PDF, 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 in. for order of service inserts)

Historical background: Harriet Tubman used this as a code song when she was helping enslaved persons escape to the north. Sarah Bradford, in her biography of Tubman, (Auburn, N. Y.: W. J. Moses, 1869), pp. 26-27, wrote: “I give these words exactly as Harriet sang them to me to a sweet and simple Methodist air. ‘De first time I go by singing dis hymn, dey don’t come out to me,’ she said, ’till I listen if de coast is clar; den when I go back and sing it again, dey come out. But if I sing:
‘Moses go down in Egypt,
‘Till ole Pharo’ let me go;
‘Hadn’t been for Adam’s fall,
‘Shouldn’t hab to died at all,’
den dey don’t come out, for dere’s danger in de way.'”

Performance notes: The Fisk Jubilee Singers were first recorded more than three decades after their founding, after many changes of personnel and music directors. In spite of the lapse of time, those early recordings are the best indication we have for the vocal style of the nineteenth century Jubilee Singers. These early recordings reveal a disciplined ensemble with light vibrato, careful enunciation, and precise intonation; a few early recordings are available online at the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project, U.C. Santa Barbara. The spare arrangement of “Go Down, Moses” seems to demand discipline, care, and precision in performance. However, the fluid melody is tolerant of the vagaries of congregational singing, and the simplicity of the arrangement means that the average congregation can learn how to sing this song in 4 part harmony.

For an introduction to this sacred song project, including information on copyright, click here.

“50 American Sacred Songs”

If your congregation is going to webcast your worship services, you obviously have to be careful of copyright issues. Music, especially, can cause problems: those who hold rights to music can be especially aggressive at enforcing their copyright.

This is further complicated by the fact that more than one person or entity may hold the copyright to a piece of music you wish to webcast, e.g., there may be one copyright on the music and another copyright on the arrangement, and still a third copyright on the lyrics.

Furthermore, you can’t trust the attributions in hymnals. For example, “How Can I Keep from Singing” is widely credited as an old Quaker hymn when it was composed by Robert Lowry in 1869; some of the arrangements published in hymnals are not by Lowry but are copyrighted; and the verse beginning “When tyrants tremble sick, with fear” is attributed to “Traditional” when it is copyright 1950 by Doris Plenn.

And it’s not just webcasts that cause copyright problems. By law, you cannot photocopy any copyrighted tunes, texts, or arrangements (no, not even for an insert in an order of service); nor can you project them onto a screen during a worship service.

So I decided to come up with fifty or so hymns, spiritual songs, chants, etc., that can be safely used without worrying about copyright issues. The tunes, texts, and arrangements either are in the public domain — either that, or they are my arrangements of text or arrangement to which I hold copyright but which I freely permit nonprofit organizations to perform, webcast, record, or project during services.

Update, October, 2016: The project was getting out of hand, so I decided to limit it to American sacred songs, generally with American texts, tunes, and arrangements (though in a few cases I’m including a little bit of English material).

I chose to retain the copyright for two reasons: first, so someone else can’t slap their copyright on my work and profit from it (and yes, Virginia, it has been done); and second, because Creative Commons did not offer exactly the kind of license I wanted. Note that I also retain copyright of the typesetting for all public domain material.

I had another powerful motivation for producing this collection: it should be quite useful for small congregations and house churches that cannot afford to purchase expensive hymnals. A small congregation with a tiny budget can photocopy as many copies as they want; they can project these sacred songs, record them or webcast them, and the congregation can do it for little or no money.

One caveat: I did not research international copyrights. Those who live in the European Union or elsewhere may find that material that is in the public domain in the United States is still protected by copyright in their jurisdiction.

Over the next year or so, I will be posting draft versions of sacred songs from this collection. You are welcome to use them in your congregation — and if you do, I’d love to hear from you if you liked it, or if you ran into any problems.

Continue reading ““50 American Sacred Songs””

Down by the bay…

If you spend any time with kids, you likely know the song “Down by the Bay”:

Down by the bay, where the watermelons grow,
Back to my home I dare not go,
For if I do, my mother will say:
“Did you ever see a….”

Then you improvise a last line with the name of an animal, and something absurd that rhymes with the animal: “Did you ever see a fly, wearing a tie?”

We’re going to sing this song at camp this summer, so I wanted lots of verses, subject to the following rules:
1. The verses had to be kid-friendly (i.e., no cheetahs drinking margaritas).
2. Only one verse per animal
3. No repeating rhymes (i.e., once you rhyme frog with dog, you cannot rhyme dog with frog)
4. Try to have as many different verbs as possible

I now have 48 verses, from various sources (Web, oral tradition, writing a few new ones). Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to add even more verses, subject to the above rules. Note that the verses below are listed in alphabetical order by animal.

1. an ant, eat an elephant?
2. a beagle, flying with the seagulls?
3. a bear, combing his hair?
4. a bee, with a sunburnt knee?
5. a beetle, threading a needle?
6. a bunny, eating milk and honey?
7. a cat, swing a baseball bat?
8. a chicken, do some guitar pickin’?
9. a chimp, flying in a blimp?
10. a cockatoo, playing a kazoo?
11. a cow, with a green eyebrow?
12. a crab, drive a taxicab?
13. a deer, throwing a spear?
14. a dog, chopping a log?
15. a duck, in a pickup truck?
16. an eagle, married to a beagle?
17. a fish, do a hula in a dish?
18. a fly, wearing a tie?
19. a fox, hiding in a box?
20. a frog, hopping on a dog?
21. a giraffe, who really made you laugh?
22. a goat, in a ferry boat?
23. a goose, kissing a moose?
24. a hawk, knitting a sock?
25. a hog, going out to jog?
26. a horse, on a golf course?
27. a kangaroo, tying her shoe?
28. a lizard, dressed for a blizzard?
29. a llama, wearing striped pajamas?
30. a lobster, shooting at a mobster?
31. a mink, at the skating rink?
32. a moose, drinking apple juice?
33. a mouse, build a great big house?
34. a mule, swimming in a pool?
35. an octopus, who liked to swear and cuss?
36. an owl, drying on a towel?
37. a pig, dancing a jig?
38. a platypus, in a shuttle bus?
39. a rat, with a great big hat?
40. a seal, on a Ferris wheel?
41. a sheep, driving a jeep?
42. a slug, give a bug a hug?
43. a snail, with a dinner pail?
44. a snake, baking a cake?
45. a spider, drinking apple cider?
46. a turkey, who liked to eat beef jerky?
47. a whale, with a polka-dotted tail?
48. a yak, doing jumping jacks?

(N.B.: If you post an additional verse on Facebook, I’ll assume you give me permission to repost on my blog.)

“This Little Light of Mine”

Is the famous song “This Little Light of Mine” an African American spiritual? Or was it composed by Harry Dixon Loes and Avis B. Christiansen around 1920?

Attributions to the African American tradition

Many hymnals and songbooks attribute “This Little Light of Mine” to “African American Spiritual,” or more generally to “Traditional.”

An influential source: Lift Every Voice and Sing II: An African American Hymnal, ed. Horace Clarence Boyer (New York: Church Publishing, 1993), has the following attribution: “Words: Traditional. Music: Negro spiritual, adapt. William Farley Smith (b. 1941)”. The melody of this version resembles the melody collected in 1939 by Alan Lomax, as sung by Doris McMurray of Huntsville, Texas.; this recording is available online here.

An equally influential source is Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs by Guy and Candie Carawan (Montgomery, Ala.: NewSouth Books, 1963/2007). The Carawans give a somewhat different melody, and attribute this as “Traditional song” (p. 21). They provide documentary evidence that indicates the song was included in the “Highlander Song Book” (p. 25), a songbook that would date from the 1930s. Incidentally, the Carawans provide a bridge that is not included in the hymnals I’ve consulted.

In addition to the audio recording by folklorist Alan Lomax in 1939 (see above), “Let hit shine” was collected by Ruby Pickens Tartt, and published in “Honey in the Rock”: The Ruby Pickens Tartt Collection of Religious Folk Songs from Sumter County, Alabama (Mercer University Press, 1991, p. 5; words only). Note that like the Lomax version, this version was probably collected in the 1930s. The editors do not provide any guidance as to when Tartt collected this particular song, but they provide the following editorial comment, without documentation: “Widely performed by choirs and gospel groups during the 1930s, a favorite on gospel radio shows, ‘Let hit shine’ is now also in white folk tradition.”

Note that “This Little Light” is NOT found in the following influential nineteenth century collections of African American songs: Slave Songs of the United States ed. William Francis Allen et al.; The Story of the Jubilee Singers; with their Songs (6th ed., 1872); Cabin and Plantation Songs as Sung by the Hampton Students (1876).

Attributions to composer Harry Dixon Loes

The words to “This Little Light” are collected by Steven Gould Axelrod, Camille Roman, and Thomas J. Travisano, in their book The New Anthology of American Poetry: Modernisms, 1900-1950 (Rutgers University Press, 2005), on p. 605. The editors add the following editorial comment: “Harry Dixon Loes (1892-1965) wrote and composed this song with Avis B. Christiansen (b. 1895). The pair also wrote the hymns ‘Blessed Redeemer’ and ‘Love Found a Way’.” This attribution, coming as it does from a well-regarded university press, carries some weight; however, the attribution is not documented.

Typical of the stories told about the song is that told by Ace Collins, in his book Music for Your Heart: Reflections from Your Favorite Songs (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2013), p. 191: “During his studies [at the Moody Bible Institute], Loes was struck by the significance of three different references to light in the New Testament…. Using light as an inspiration and coupling it to a melody that carried the feel of a spiritual, Loes wrote ‘This Little Light of Mine.’ Yet the song, which is today almost universally known, took a while to take off. Although written in 1920, it would be in the days just before World War II that churches began to adopt ‘This Little Light of Mine’ as a part of Sunday school programs. Within a decade, Loes’s song was translated into scores of languages and sung all over the globe.” Collins provides no documentation whatsoever for any of these assertions.

Although the song was supposedly composed c. 1920, I was unable to find a reference to it in the Catalog for Copyright Entries for the years 1920 and 1921; however, Loes might have copyrighted the song later than 1920.

Hymnary.org shows no publications in hymnals prior to about the late 1930s; see graph here. However, Hymnary.org does not include every single U.S. hymnal from the twentieth century.

Wikipedia attributes the song to Loes, but does not document the source for this attribution. The Wikipedia page was created July 26, 2007, and many online sources (and probably many print sources) unquestioningly accept the Wikipedia attribution in spite of the lack of documentation; therefore, be wary of any source published 2007 and later that attributes the song to Loes.

The Web site Hymntime.com does NOT list “This Little Light” as one of Loes’s compositions. Note that Hymntime.com gives Loes’s dates as October 20, 1892 to February 9, 1965; the birth year is different from the birth year given by Wikipedia.

Conclusion and questions

The fact that folklorists collected the song after Dixon’s purported composition date of circa 1920 indicates that the song could have passed quickly into the folk repertoire soon after composition. However, assuming Loes did indeed write the song (or if Loes co-wrote it with Christiansen), where and when was it first published?

If Loes wrote the melody, what was his original version? Similarly, if the melody is an African American spiritual, what is the earliest recorded version of the melody?

Loes was white, so if he wrote the song, how did it become associated with the African American tradition?

In the absence of firm answers to these and other questions about the origins of this tune, the most careful attribution for this song would be “Unknown.”