PLAIN FOLK by Les Pearson At the core of the Ragin' Grannies' weekly peace demonstration at Speaker's Corner is their singing. Three of their nine songs for peace are sung to the melodies of old-time favourite hymns and gospel choruses. Matching re-worded lyrics to these familiar tunes is practically a social protest tradition! For many in my "fifties something" generation, these songs were Sunday School staples. They were the songs our parents hummed in the kitchen or the fervent affirmations of faith at regular church services and summer tent revivals. The tunes are catchy and fall in the average everyone's five-note musical range. If you give even failing memory a minute, several of these tunes are certain to echo like a timeless Berma-Shave jingle. What high school has not cheered its team with a robust rendering of When--substitute your team's name for Saints--Go Marchin' In? Remember those long school bus trips? Songs like these were the best part. And they have been used to rouse social causes far beyond lost cause, pimply, basketball squads. Two American protest songs have particularly interesting gospel pedigrees. One was originally called Oh brothers, will you meet us on Canaan's happy shore? This original gospel tune was likely composed by William Steffe. But while the composer is long forgotten, Julia Ward Howe is not. She earned five dollars when the Atlantic Monthly (Feb./1862) published her lyrics for Battle Hymn of the Republic. Overnight it became the marching song of the Union Army. These new lyrics inspired. But so had an even earlier make-over, John Brown's Body. This first gospel revision had inflamed the hearts of northern abolitionists to provoke a war with the South. Later in America's social evolution and prior to WW II, union organizers and pickets re-invented the lyrics yet again and Solidarity Forever appeared. The song was still being sung in the sixties to support a range of causes on college campuses. New lyrics inspired leftists, Ban-the-Bomb crusaders, and protesters against the war in Viet Nam. The "Glory, glory, hallelujah" may have been because "...the union makes us strong." Or it may have been used to shock the older generation with laud and praise for the day "...when the Red Revolution comes." The original melody lingers. Only the lyrics have changed as causes have come and gone. In the last half of the twentieth century one American protest song towers above all others. We Shall Overcome was based on Charles Tindley's gospel song, I'll Overcome Some Day, written in 1900. Tindley could never imagine the profound power of his song or the dramatic social change it would inspire. It became the hymn of the civil rights movement. It was sung at sit-ins in Selma and at civil rights protests across the USA. It was an anthem for folk stars like Peter, Paul and Mary. Joan Baez sang it at the 1963 March on Washington. Later, Desmond Tutu imported the tune to fight apartheid in South Africa. Wherever this song has appeared, social change has followed! Gospel is good news. Not all revised gospel songs have
improved the human condition. The good news is that some have. |