So our friends the Brothers Judd added to their excerpt of my post below the YouTube link to the Blind Boys of Alabama singing “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” It deserves to be, of course, the authoritative traditional version. Here’s my first musical link, my Christmas gift to each of you.
I heard a different version tonight at the Metropolitan United Methodist Church–a very historic African-American church–on Broad Street in Rome, GA. Seven local black churches combined the best of their choirs–including stellar soloists–for a Christmas concert. They did a number of traditional Christmas carols in arrangements both respectful and imaginative. The only “Christmas spiritual” was “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” and the choir and the soloist did it justice in a somewhat different way from the Blind Boys. It was–and was meant to be–a particularly moving moment in the program.
Each carol or hymn was followed by just a bit of preaching. In this case of “Go Tell It” the message was that the song says don’t just tell it on the mountain, but everywhere you go. And the preacher listed a variety of seemingly unpromising places where the good news needs to be told. If you had just a moment to emphasize one point in the text, that was the right one.
December 24th, 2012 | 12:26 pm
Sounds like a wonderful event. Thanks for sharing (including the rendition of the song). Merry Christmas to you and yours (and all the PomoCon gang)!!
December 26th, 2012 | 11:04 am
[...] So our friends the Brothers Judd added to their excerpt of my post below the YouTube link to the Blind Boys of Alabama singing “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” Source: Postmodern Conservative [...]
December 26th, 2012 | 11:27 am
This may be the best recording I’ve heard of Go Tell it on the Mountain, but you forgot to give credit to Tom Waits for his solo work. As I listen to it, it’s really more like the Blind Boys singing backup to our Tom. Tom Waits, of course, has been writing and singing in one way or another about the American seeker who never quite feels completely at home in this world for more than three decades. I’m no expert on music, but I wonder if Carl has any thoughts on the Tom Waits songbook.
It certainly reflects a different sort of soulfulness than that of the other Thom so many of my friends enjoy listening to, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. Perhaps there’s something to be said, following the lines of what Peter has already begun to trace out in his Christmas posts, about American soulfulness vis-a-vis that of the British Mr. Yorke and his like. Namely, the American blues and spirituals give words to a sorrow and hope or movement of the soul which is best expressed by Yorke and maybe Coldplay’s Chris in wordless howling and moaning over a techno-industrial soundscape. While there is a certain beauty in the wordless but pure falsetto tones of the Brits, I can’t help but prefer the gruff and gritty lyricism of Waits’ music.
January 20th, 2013 | 10:30 pm
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