Hide Article Text (OCR)
Roll Jordan, RollNegro spirituals Not Written, They Just HappenedNotodv knows the name of the church. Nobody knows the preacher’s name. Nor does anybody know the exact date. Butthe 1850s, a Negro preacher stood in his tt and read from the 37th chapter ofsomewhere In the South, probably during .. . flier stood in hispulpit antEzekiel, “The hand of the Lord was upon •ute/1 end the congregation unanimously agreed» “Yea I51 The preacher read on, “...The spirit of the Lord set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones.” He paused and the worshippers shouted ‘Halleluiah!The bones were dry the preacher read on. “Dry boneal the congregation echoed..From the 10th verse the minister continued, , t t, - -—,........-*'... And the bresth came Into them, and “ her light to shine” Thus, “De Moonthey lived,.ind stood up upon their feetl” Refu.s,e to,Shlne- , The R ver Jordan isThen, raising his afms, he assured his hear- mentioned many times in the Bible and ism, •’Dry bone* gwine t’ rise agalnl” therefore mentioned many times in the The congregation took up the chant, ^ritual*. The Negro stands on Jordan'sDry bones gwine t‘ rise again . , . dry Tbaks- cr.Ifses over J°rdan watchesbones gwine t* rise again ?. . ” And a Jordan ™]]al was bhis own songs from'passages of Scripture ana sang them to his own music.Picking up a phrase that struck him, he broke into the preacher’s sermon with a repetitious chant. As one old “Mammy put it, “Dey’d all take it up and keep at it, and keep a-addin* to it, and den it would be a spiritual.•Most spirituals can be easily traced totnr1. 1p,flssa18es- The Book of Kings tells of Elijahs chariot. Hence. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Revelation tells of thebook of life. Thus, My Name’s Been Written in De Book of Lite,”feaiah says, And the moon shall notsplrituabom.Until the middle !800s the Negro worshipped In the white man’s church where he sat in specially provided galleries. Rolls of older churches in the South still bear names of both colored, and white members. Some old church buildings still exhibit their “slave galleries/* It was here the Negro learned to sing, line by line, the hymns of the white man.By 1850 the Negro had hfa own churchAnd so, set apart from the formality of the white man’s church, the Negro made and sang his spirituals. The notes were not written down In the methodical man* ner of the while man. The words Were not metered out by any formula.The spirituals were neither signed jnof dated. In the years just pi War and the turn of tinrlor to the Civil e century, they Jusi happened. But they are as finnly a part of the American music as the mostbuilding and his own colored preacher, -scholarly composition of the white mam If Here.he sang hymns from memory. When that seems an over-statement/pcrhaps you he couldn’t remember all the lines, he re- never heard a well balanced group of No* pcated the ones he knew. And he made gross sing such spirituals as:Ml Jordan, rail, rail Jardon. nil I wnttc e* to haov’n wHon I lt;ffo t* oT Jafdon rail Ml Jordan, rail, roll Jordon, ratf, I wonftr «• to hoov’n wtim I dla Is Iwer aT Jordon rail.M. brodiirt yaw ewfhtor fctw Sara# Tai, my laid,A rttHn* up In da kto|dom To hoar oT Jordon roll.Ml Jordon, rail, nil Jordan, raff,I wanlor 90 to hoov'n whan I die, To haor oT Jordon rail.A Public Service Feature Sponsored by:
Newspaper Details
Buffalo Center Tribune
Buffalo Center, Iowa, US
Thu, Nov 21, 1968
Page 6
Full Page
Clipped by
Paul E.
NA, 07 Apr 2019
Other Publications Near Buffalo Center, Iowa
Buffalo Center Tribune
Buffalo Center Globe
