Black History Month: Freedom Songs

There is a sense in which most music that comes from the African American and Africana experience might be regarded as freedom songs. The African diaspora and the enslavement and persecution that followed made it inevitable that a central theme of Africana music would be hope, liberation, and freedom. It is present in much of the solo, choral, and congregational song.

But there is a specific genre of this music known as freedom songs or liberation songs. This is music that specifically came out of the struggle for equality and civil rights in the U.S.A., South Africa, and other parts of the world. This is the music that was born from the battle against segregation, apartheid, discrimination, inequality, and persecution. This battle, at least on the part of African Americans, was nonviolent. That is not to say it was a passive and peaceful resistance. On the contrary, even in the face of beatings, lynchings, taunting, shootings, bombings, cross burnings, fire hoses, and dogs, there was resistance that was active, aggressive, and confrontational. And in the middle of it all, there was music and there was singing.

Bernice Johnson Reagon, in an interview with PBS's Maria Daniels on WGBH in Boston in July 2006 made the point that music bathed the entire protest movement for freedom and equality. Wherever and whenever they gathered, they sang. They sang old hymns ("What a Fellowship," "Onward Christian Soldiers"); they sang newer songs; they sang spirituals; and they sang newly improvised songs and adaptations of old songs that sprang from the movement. (Read more on music in the Civil Rights Movement at "Eyes on the Prize: Music in the Civil Rights Movement." )

The freedom songs that have been included in The United Methodist Hymnal (UMH), The Upper Room Worshipbook (URW), and The Faith We Sing (TFWS) are the anthems of that struggle and continue as calls for us today, not only to remember the struggle, but to champion freedom and liberation from oppression wherever it exists. Here are some examples:

• 533 (UMH), "We Shall Overcome": This is the anthem of the Civil Rights movement, said by many to derive from Charles Tindley's 1901 hymn, "I'll Overcome Some Day." (For more on this song, see Music Musing #89: "We Shall Overcome.")
• 2192 (TFWS), "Freedom Is Coming": A song that came out of the South African struggle against the oppression of apartheid. In 1988, the South African Council of Churches was the strongest opponent of apartheid. Following a massive bomb that blew up their headquarters building, Desmond Tutu and the staff arrived at the scene of destruction and devastation and began to sing and dance in the street as an act of defiance. They sang, "Freedom is coming! O yes I know!"
• 2194 (TFWS), "O Freedom": A Spiritual that gained new life during the Civil Rights struggle with its refrain, "And before I'll be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave, and go home to my Lord and be free."
• 2235 (TFWS), "We Are Marching in the Light of God/Siyahamba": Another freedom song from South Africa, "Siyahamba" has become a favorite of American congregations.
• 433 (URW), "Walking in the Light of God": This infectious song with dramatic variations in the verses also comes from the South African struggle.

One final freedom song not in any of these or any other collections is "I'll Go to Jail if the Spirit Says Jail." As demonstrators marched and were attacked by dogs . . . as they tried to vote and were hosed by police . . . as they tried to eat at store lunch counters and were beaten by thugs . . . they were arrested and taken to jail. There were high school and college students who risked their lives to demonstrate against segregation, and as they were being beaten, as they were taken to jail, and as they sat in jail, still they sang. This was one of countless songs and verses improvised out of the experience, perhaps available in print for the first time here.