PAINTING: “Fog Landscape,” by Alanna Siegfried Graboyes, asgraboyesart.com
Online musical performances combined with historical lectures were my way of coping with the isolation imposed by the COVID-19 lockdowns. Producing these short videos kept my mind busy and offered some entertainment for and discussion with those in my social media circles. Before each performance, I researched the provenance of that evening’s song—and was struck by how many were motivated in different ways by the scourge of human prejudice. In some cases, that connection was obvious, but in others, it was unexpected. Below are six links from my YouTube Channel. (You are welcome to subscribe to that channel, as well as to BASTIAT’S WINDOW.)
“Jacob’s Ladder,” composed sometime around the founding of the United States, likely originated with slaves kidnapped from what is now Liberia—and the song re-interprets the Jacob’s Ladder story from Genesis as a metaphor for the struggles against American slavery. Liberia has special links to my hometown of Petersburg, Virginia. Joseph Jenkins Roberts, an African-American born to a free family in 1809, was a resident of Petersburg for a time and emigrated in 1829 to Liberia. There, he became a merchant and, eventually, that country’s first president (and its seventh president, too). Growing up, I knew at least one of his relatives in Petersburg, and in 1984 I found myself standing beneath Roberts’ statue in Monrovia, Liberia. (Regrettably, that was in the pre-selfie era, so there is no photo of me with the statue.) [My arrangement here is for a spare piano jazz solo.]
“We Gather Together” is the closest America has to an official anthem for the Thanksgiving holiday, and its roots also lie in bigotry. In the late 16th century, the Spanish Netherlands comprised most of today’s Belgium and Luxembourg, plus chunks of what are now France, Germany, and the Netherlands. The Catholic colonial rulers had prohibited gatherings of Protestants for worship. In 1597, a military victory by the Dutch in their war against Spain restored freedom of religion to part of the realm. This song (“Wilt Heden Nu Treden”) celebrated that victory and freedom of religion. [Here, I perform the piece in a contrapuntal jazz arrangement for piano and violin.]
“All the Pretty Little Horses” was a popular staple of the American folk scene, particularly in the 1960s, when it was recorded by a long list of singers. The song’s origins are not 100 percent certain, but a common theory is that what sounds like a sweet, innocent lullaby is really a wail of unspeakable tragedy. In one verse the singer is rocking a child to sleep, while in a later verse, she sings, “Way down yonder, in the meadow, poor little baby crying ‘Mama.’” The theory is that in the first verse, an enslaved woman is singing the master’s child to sleep with sweet images of horses, while in the second verse, she is lamenting the condition of her own far-off child, whom she cannot care for because of the strictures of bondage.
“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” likely dates from sometime around the end of slavery. Its poignant lyrics are drawn from a well of despair, interpreted by some as representing the despondence of someone freed from slavery, now destined to wander alone in a still-hostile land. In the mid-20th century, this interpretation helped make this song an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement.
“Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow,” (based on the slightly earlier, “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”) is a jaunty, popular campfire ditty that, on closer inspection was itself a cruel instrument of prejudice—and of what we today would call “fake news.” In 1871, much of Chicago burned to the ground in a fire that likely started in the barn of Mrs. Catherine O’Leary, an Irish immigrant. A newspaper account by one Michael Ahern claimed that Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow kicked over a kerosene lantern as she milked it; the story played well into popular bigotry against Irish-Americans. An official inquest found that Mrs. O’Leary and her husband were asleep at the time the fire broke out; a wayward chimney ember or some passing reveler’s pipe ashes may have set off the fire. But after the news accounts, the lyrics about Mrs. O’Leary were applied to the infectious melody, and her reputation was forever destroyed. Not long before O’Leary’s 1895 death, Ahern admitted that he and two other reporters had made up the story. Persuaded by the research of an amateur historian, the Chicago City Council voted to exonerate Mrs. O’Leary—in 1997, 126 years after the fire and 102 years after her death.
“Kumbaya” likely originated with the Gullah-Geechee peoples of the Sea Islands off of South Carolina and Georgia, where conditions allowed a flourishing of culture that was practically impossible to achieve for enslaved people on the mainland. Their numbers were sizable, and the slavemasters generally avoided the islands, which were geographically isolated and laden with malaria, for which the white slaveowners had no inherited immunity. This relative isolation from the worst ravages of slavery allowed a distinctive culture to arise. When Union forces arrived in 1861, the Gullah people readily volunteered for service. Among the most unique features of Gullah culture is its distinctive language, which is beautifully displayed in the Gullah Bible, published in 2005.