Oh,one more thing...

In black gospel, I've always appreciated how the singer can personalize an event that took place two thousand years ago and put it in terms that we can understand today. A case in point:

We're working on a Christmas program these days, and we're learning No Room At The Inn, more or less following a recording of the song by Mahalia Jackson. We're taking it from a solo with piano accompaniment to a quartet with electric guitar, and adding some responses, but basically it's still the same song.

When you think of all the elements that go into the nativity story, there are the shepherds and their sheep, the manger, the cattle lowing, the star of Bethlehem, the angels singing on high, even (incorrectly) the three wisemen and gifts of frankincense and Myrrh. I don't know about you, but these are not part of my everyday life. No Room At The Inn doesn't have any of these familiar images. It tells the story from the perspective of Joseph and Mary and the anxiety they felt by being turned away, everywhere they went. Blacks know about that, better than most folks, but we've all experienced being turned away. We know how that feels. So, the first two verses of the story are about Mary and Joseph:

"According to the word, there was a virgin birth
The father of Jesus was wandering around that night
He was trying to find a place for the Savior to be born
But there was no room, no room at the inn

I know that Mother was worried, and she began to moan
She prayed to be delivered of her only son
She was very sad, I know, 'cause she had no place to go
For there was no room, no room at the inn

You can really empathize with Joseph and Mary in those verses.

And who will witness for this grand night? The shepherds? the angels singing on high? the Three Wisemen? (maybe even the little stop-action drummer boy.) No, it was the plain folks, working in the inn, seen through the eyes of a race who often made a living in the most modest jobs:

"The bell boy and the Porter, the waitress and the cook
Will be witness up in Heaven, to all the things that it took
She was turned away, and had no place to stay
For there was no room, no room at the inn"

Now I kinda doubt that they had bell boys and porters back in those days. If they did, they never made it into the King James version.
But, it is the folks in the lowly positions that were not respected, who were called on to witness up in Heaven.

And the chorus is:

"There was no room, no room at the inn
There was no room, no room at the inn
When the time had fully come, for the Savior to be born
There was no room, no room at the inn"

A song that tells the story in a way that we can relate to it. I've been a night watchmen, a waiter and a cook, so I can feel a little pleasure in imagining that it was the folks in the back room that did the testifying...

Jerry