THE STORY BEHIND CHRISTMAS CAROLS (26): GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN: Go Tell it on the Mountain is a Christmas hymn written by John Wesley Work Jr. It was included in a 1940 book, American Negro Songs and Spirituals. This is according to The Hymnuts, from an old Negro spiritual When I was a seeker. The carol is in line with Isaiah 52:7 - “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, Your God reigns! The spiritual Go Tell It on the Mountain was born in the oral culture of African slaves in the American south. It was embraced by the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Today it is a perennial favourite at Christmas concerts and church services across North America. Go Tell It on the Mountain has come to mean many things depending on the time and place in which it is sung - freedom anthem, hymn of faith, a simple song of Christmas. As is the case with most spirituals, its music and lyrics cannot be attributed to any one person. African American composer John Wesley Work is credited with formally adapting the song and including it in a songbook in 1907. But the versions of Go Tell it on the Mountain are as varied and distinctive as the people performing it. But it is always, at its heart, a song of joy. This program comes to us from Producer Jean Dalrymple of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and is part of our ongoing international documentary exchange series, Crossing Boundaries. John Wesley Work, Jr., an African-American professor at Fisk University in Nashville, first published the lyrics and music to this slave spiritual in 1907. In 1907, John W. Works III, a professor at Fisk University and a professional musician, compiled and published Folk Songs of the American Negro,a songbook designed to preserve and American slaves since as far back as at least 1865. The song had come from the fields of the South, born from the inspiration of a slave’s Christmas, and it was unique in that, in the hundreds of Negro spirituals the work family saved from extinction, few had been written about Christmas. Most, as would seem only natural, centered on earthly pain and suffering, and the joy and happiness that only heaven seemed to offer. To black slaves in the United States, the birth of a Saviour who would set all men free was a miracle to be sung about. And when there was something so notable to tell, what better place to tell it from than a mountain, just as Jesus had chosen for His Sermon on the Mount. Go Tell It on the Mountain, an authentic spiritual that dates probably from the early 1800s, was first popularised in 1879 by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers. This chorus travelled throughout the United States and Europe at the end of the last century, earning scholarship-fund money for Fisk, a school founded to educate freed slaves. John Wesley Work, Jr., may not have originated the Negro spiritual “Go, Tell It on the Mountain,” but he can take credit for the fact that we still sing it every Christmas. As the son of a church choir director, Work grew up in Nashville loving music. Even though he earned his Master’s in Latin and went on to teach ancient Latin and Greek, his first love continued to be music, and he went on to become the first African-American collector of Negro spirituals. This proved to be a daunting task for Work because they were passed down orally, from plantation to plantation; very few were ever written down. But Work proved up to the challenge, publishing his first book, New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, in Songs of the American Negro, six years later. It was in this second volume that “Go, Tell It on the Mountain” first appeared. The original singers of the song fulfilled the same important task the angels gave the shepherds that first Christmas night outside of Bethlehem, proclaiming, “that Jesus Christ is born!” Go Tell It on the Mountain is set during the Great Migration, a time in American history characterised by a mass exodus of African Americans from the rural south to northern cities. In the years between 1916 and 1921, half a million southern blacks (representing 5 percent of the black population) moved to northern and, to a lesser extent, western cities. In a broader historical context, which includes the time period between 1890-1960, the statistics are even more startling. In 1890, 90 percent of American blacks lived in southern and rural settings, while the remaining 10 percent lived in northern or urban settings. By 1960, those statistics had reversed, with 90 percent of African Americans living outside the South and in urban settings. In the 1960s Peter Paul and Mary took the liberty to re-write some of the lyrics of Go Tell It on the Mountain , renamed it Tell it on the Mountain, and recorded it as a Civil Rights theme song. In 1963, the musical team Peter, Paul and Mary, along with their musical director, Milt Okun, adapted and rewrote Go Tell It on the Mountain as Tell It on the Mountain, their lyrics referring specifically to Exodus and using the phrase Let my people go, but referring implicitly to the Civil Rights struggle of the early 1960s. According to Religious Studies professor and Civil Rights historian Charles Marsh, it was African American Civil Rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer who combined this song with the spiritual Go Down Moses, taking the last line of the chorus, Let my people go and substituting it in the chorus of Go Tell it on the Mountain (Marsh, Charles, Gods Long Summer, Princeton, 1997, page 47). Marsh does not document this claim, but given that Hamer was highly active in Civil Rights work beginning in the 1950s, and that the use of the Exodus story and the singing of spirituals played a central role in her activities, this claim is compelling. In the 1990s, musician Art Paul Schlossel re-wrote the lyrics for kids and renamed the song Go Tell It on the Swingset. It has been popular for many years as a Christmas Carol, and is also sung in some settings as a praise song. In one format or another since its conception, the anthem of Go Tell It on the Mountain has been sung in the fields, on buses, in the streets, in churches, on school choir platforms and in concert halls. The text: Go Tell It On The Mountain: Refrain: Go, tell it on the mountain, Over the hills and everywhere Go, tell it on the mountain, That Jesus Christ is born. 1. The shepherds feared and trembled When low above the earth, Rang out the angels chorus That hailed our Saviours birth. Refrain 2. While shepherds kept their watching Oer silent flocks by night, Behold, throughout the heavens There shone a holy light Refrain 3. And lo! When they had heard it, They all bowed down to pray, Then travelled on together, To where the Baby lay. Refrain 4. Down in a lowly manger The humble Christ was born And God sent us salvation That blessed Christmas morn. Refrain
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 11:54:50 +0000
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