Lyr Add: Wasn't That a Mighty Day (spiritual)

Subject: WASN'T THAT A MIGHTY DAY
From: wysiwyg
Date: 20 Sep 01 - 10:28 PM

See also:

Wasn't That A Mighty Day, American Negro Songs

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WASN'T THAT A MIGHTY DAY
Traditional Traditional Negro Spiritual


Wasn't that a mighty day
Hallelu! Hallelu!
Wasn't that a mighty day
When Jesus Christ was born

Well, Jesus was a baby
A-lying at Mary's arm
Lying in the stable at Bethlehem
The beasts they keep-a him warm

Wasn't that a mighty day
Hallelu! Hallelu!
Wasn't that a mighty day
When Jesus Christ was born


SOURCE:
Park New Choir, http://parknewchoir.free.fr/

@spirituals

SH

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: WASN'T THAT A MIGHTY DAY
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Oct 01 - 03:27 PM

Work, American Negro Songs and Spirituals, p. 214, has a verse not given above. The form is simpler, as well, and only two verses given.

Wasn't that a mighty day,
Wasn't that a mighty day,
Wasn't that a mighty day,
When Jesus Christ was born.

Star rose in the east,
Star rose in the east,
Star rose in the east,
When Jesus Christ was born.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: WASN'T THAT A MIGHTY DAY
From: Mrrzy
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 09:58 AM

Is this the basis for Mighty Day great god that morning when the storm winds swept the town, the song about the Galveston flood? I have it by a white guy trying to sing like Harry Belafonte, if it were based on a negro spiritual that would make a lot more sense, the local dialect around Galveston being more likely to be Mexican-influenced...

Subject: Permathread Material!
From: wysiwyg
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 11:27 AM

Interesting possibility. Dicho found a whole BUNCH of cool stuff in Texas lore, and up until now most of the record of early collecting seemed focused elsewhere-- maybe you could delve a little deeper and see what you find out.

One of the things that happened (as slavery became a memory in the US as opposed to a present-time reality) was that among black folk, the slave-time stuff got to be not only painful, but uncool and unsafe. Stratification of economic classes began to occur as black folk became free workers, and pretty soon the things of the slave times became associated with being po' and powerless.

People wanted to get ahead. The only place to get ahead was within white culture and economics, with openings there dependent on white willingness.

So not only was a lot of negro folk/spiritual music sanitized, stolen, and/or mainstreamed by white folk, the black folk too began to limit how "negro" the songs would remain. Thus there are apparent disconnects in the music history, where something that had been a spiritual seems to suddenly appear in some other form. What is missing is the knowledge, in our time-- the direct experience-- of how much life the negro spirituals still had in people's memories and traditions as this process was occurring.

There is no material I've found (yet!) that says, "Well, I had grown up hearing this song sung and later it inspired this..." Or, "Huh, I never realized that melody and that phrase are echoes of ...." This is because the process occurred within a paradigm including a lot of fear and struggle; people's attention was on getting ahead, not on how they were doing it.

What I am saying is, there is a story there with these songs that seems to start at one point in time, because that's when the written record seems to have originated-- but the story of the song(s) is actually spread out before and after that point, in a broad and raggedy-edged flow that we just can't discern from our current vantage point on the history.

Fascinating to try to learn more, though!

This thread also illustrates why (IMO) it is SO important to give each of these songs their own thread, so that the title shows on the thread list.... and so that echoes of relationship to other songs can occur among all of us, when we see something that rings a bell. It's hit or miss, but it seems to be pulling a lot of those relationshjips out into the open.

I love to think of it like this-- that among all the different musics our wildly-diverse Mudcatters know so much about-- the negro spirituals run through like threads of hot molasses spilling off a table.

Each of us has contact with the story is some way, once we catch sight of it.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: WASN'T THAT A MIGHTY DAY
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 05:41 PM

Points like these (those not already there) probably will be synthesized in History of Spirituals, etc., don't you think, Susan? One point: I think many musicians who might have got their start in the local church, on being exposed to other music or seeing that they could make a living playing for dances or in brothels didn't worry overly much about where their ideas came from. I think those of us with the leisure to "look back" are the ones who look at "roots." I have heard current classical and gospel Black performers in interview look back at influences from family, church and history, but I doubt that performers in the 1890s or earlier thought much about it- they just "did" it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: WASN'T THAT A MIGHTY DAY
From: wysiwyg
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 07:15 PM

Yup, it will be synthesized, and yup, I agree on your description. When I think of the work of doing our Sat Nite service, and the many sources I draw from for the music-- and how tired we are after it-- if someone asked me after the service where each item came from I would probably not have a clue!

~S~

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: WASN'T THAT A MIGHTY DAY
From: M.Ted
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 02:58 AM

Dicho has a good point--many of the songs that are used for "church music" have been appropriated from secular genres--sometimes with a nod to the source (General Booth took pride in the fact that he appropriated the melodies from drinking songs and turned them to the Lord's work, much as he did with the drinkers) but usually not(Ira Gershwin considered Martin Luther to be one of the great lyricists because he set his religious songs to folk melodies)--

When the melodies are written down and the lyrics are transcribed, they become a part of a different culture--Most all of the songs that were collected in "Slave Songs of the United States" in 1867, for instance, were unknown outside of the immediate area where they had been found--in the years after publication, many of the songs became popular, and among people who had no connection with the culture that created the songs--and even though the communities that created the songs disappeared, the songs themselves are preserved by people who had no connection at all to the community that created the songs--The religious community that created Michael Row the Boat Ashore probably had disappeared by the end of the Civil War--even though the song is widely known today, it is because it was introduced in a considerably altered form into the folk revival culture of the 50's and 60's, so it didn't come down to us from an existing spiritual or gospel tradition at all--those traditions have a considerably different "songbook"--

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: WASN'T THAT A MIGHTY DAY
From: masato sakurai
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 05:50 AM

Kathleen Battle sings "Wasn't That a Mighty Day" in her Christmas song album Angels' Glory. It was used in Black gospel musical Black Nativity.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: WASN'T THAT A MIGHTY DAY
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 04:03 PM

Yes, M Ted, the truth is we know almost nothing about the provenance of particular spirituals, even in Allen et al., Fenner, and Seward which were are pre-1880. The majority of the students were from the small towns and cities and much was contributed by the freed blacks associated with the institutes. The music of slaves working the plantations was collected very late and very little. Education in the institutes was according to the precepts of the American Missionary Society and Congregationalist ministers, and outside the institutes was strongly influenced by Baptist, Methodist (and Catholic in some areas) ministers and teachers. The spirituals preserved in these older compendia have been arranged for presentation, but the vernacular of the time is preserved in many of them and they are the closest we have to the original.