Sunday we sang "Go, Tell It On the Mountain." I chose the song mostly to expand our Christmas carol offerings, but I also knew this song was originally a Negro spiritual. Its history is worth recounting.
Last year I focused some time each Sunday morning on telling the story of one of the carols we sang that morning. I enjoyed learning about the history of these songs that are attached to this season and embedded deeply in our hearts. I thought I'd take an opportunity to reprise our song history exploration here...
"Go, Tell It On the Mountain" once saved a university from financial collapse. In 1871, Fisk University of Nashville, TN was debt-ridden and about to close its doors. A ten-member touring ensemble called the Fisk Jubilee Singers was formed to raise funds for the university. They took the entire treasury with them for travel expenses, and departed on an 18-month tour which ultimately saved the college from closing. In the course of the tour, the African-American singers began using more and more spirituals in their shows, at the encouragement of George White, the Fisk University treasurer at the time. Their use of spirituals earned them an international reputation, and preserved the legacy of the Negro spiritual in the process.*
Among the spirituals the Fisk Jubilee Singers presented was "Go, Tell It On the Mountain." The earliest version of the hymn was published by John Wesley Work, Jr. in 1909, under the title "Christmas Plantation Song." John's father was a teacher at Fisk, and he loved "Go, Tell It On the Mountain," which was sung by students on Christmas Day each year as they walked the buildings of the university.
As with many popular hymns, there have been a variety of stanzas attached to the song over the year. The original stanzas featured slave dialect:
When I was a seeker
I sought both night and day.
I ask de Lord to help me,
An' He show me de way.
He made me a watchman
Upon the city wall,
An' if I am a Christian
I am the least of all.
Chorus:
Go tell it on de mountain,
Over de hills and everywhere.
Go tell it on de mountain,
Dat Jesus Christ is born.
This year, more than previous years, I've found myself in conversations about how to deal with loss in the Christmas season. One friend lost his dad in 2015. Another friend will lose her cousin-in-law to illness before Christmas Day. Another friend recently had a miscarriage, and another is watching his hospice-bound wife slowly give in to cancer as I write this. So it was interesting for me to learn that the students involved with the Fisk Jubilee Singers were reluctant to sing spirituals to audiences across the country. One said, "The slave songs were never used by us then in public. They were associated with slavery and the dark past and represented the things to be forgotten." But at the encouragement of George White, they began to sing these songs in public.
I think this is a great example of God bringing something good out of something bad (Rom 8:28), and I think God used community to bring it about. The Negro spirituals represented oppression, slavery, a dark chapter for African Americans. But because they were brought into public spaces, they saved a university, they preserved an art form, and they give us words to proclaim the hope we have in Christ today. You may be in the midst of loss, or struggle, or pain. I don't minimize that: dark chapters of our story are real as we walk through them. What I will say is this: God is there. He walks through the darkest valley. But he soon leads us out of it, to quiet waters where he restores our soul. May we place our hope there.
* Much credit for this blog goes to C. Michael Hawn, Distinguished Professor of Music at SMU Perkins. Read more on "Go, Tell It On the Mountain" here: http://www.
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