Finding the Soul of the Song
Dr. Bruce S. Wright tells of a well-known American-Italian tenor who said that he never sang a selection until he found out the soul of the number. For that reason he refrained from singing Negro spirituals until he had spent considerable time in the South living among the Negroes, listening to them sing. So today he sings “Steal Away” as he heard it sung at a Negro revival; and he sings “Goin’ Home” as he heard it sung at the dying bed of an aged Negro in a Negro’s cabin.
Here is a vivid description by Annemarie Ewing in The Christian Herald:
How the Negroes Sing
“In the huge stadium, dropped like a bowl beneath the starlit sky, thousands of people sit waiting to hear the Hall Johnson Choir. Overhead the sky is indigo, dotted with twinkling stars, glorious with the cool silver of a full moon. A tender, capricious wind breathes softly over the semicircle of the waiting crowd.
“Now they come—a handful of Negroes, perhaps a dozen men and a half dozen women. So small a group looks lost on the big platform. At a signal from their leader they begin.
‘Wade in de water, chillun,
God’s a’goin’ to trouble de water...’
“Challenging as the voice of a delivered soul, the strong, clear bass gives out the words; others join in—a soprano acquiescence, a contralto surge of content, the ecstatic agreement of the tenor. Joy throbs through the singers’ throats, their cup of joy runneth over!
‘See dat band all dressed in white,