In the dark times will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.
Berthold Brecht

Rhiannon Giddens, a multifaceted singer, musician, folklorist and storyteller brings American history alive in her her drive to unearth the stories of forgotten people so that her audiences and listeners may remember them.

On Moon Meets The Sun,  a defiantly joyous song, Giddens and her comrades of Our Native Daughters sing in the round over a polyrhythmic lacework of banjo and guitar, vowing not to let radical suffering diminish humanity. “You put the shackles on our feet, but we’re dancing”, she sings, “You steal our very tongue, but we’re dancing” “Ah, you sell our work for your profit, but we’re dancing,” she scoffs. “Ah, you think our home we have forgotten, but we’re dancing.” Then she recedes into the jubilant tangle of voices: “You can’t stop us now (We’ll be dancing). You can’t keep us down (We’ll be dancing)”.

Rhiannon Giddens: “There is surely racism in this country — it’s baked into our oldest institutions – just as there is sexism, millennia old. At the intersection of the two stands the African American woman. Used, abused, ignored and scorned, she has in the face of these things been unbelievably brave, groundbreaking and insistent. Black women have historically had the most to lose, and have therefore been the fiercest fighters for justice — in large, public ways that are only beginning to be highlighted, and in countless domestic ways that will most likely never be acknowledged.”

NPR – First Listen to Our Native Daughters  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0FfAagEkH8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZa1AMr7Kk0

Quasheba, Quasheba
You’re free now, you’re free now
How does your spirit fly?
Blood of your blood
Bone of your bone
By the grace of your strength we have life

From the Golden Coast of Ghana
To the bondage of Grenada
You kept the dream of hope alive
They burned your body
They cursed your blackness
But they could not take your lights

Raped and beaten, your babies taken
Starved and sold and sold again
Ain’t you a woman, of love deserving
Ain’t it somethin’ you survived?

Quasheba, Quasheba
You’re free now, you’re free now
How does your spirit fly?
Blood of your blood
Bone of your bone
By the grace of your strength we have life

You dreamt of home, you dreamt of freedom
You died a slave, you died alone
You came from warriors who once built empires
Ashanti’s kingdom carries on

You were forgotten, almost forsaken
Your children founded generations
Your strength sustained them
They won their freedom
Traced their roots to find you [waiting?]

Quasheba, Quasheba
You’re free now, you’re free now
How far your spirit’s flown
Blood of your blood
Bone of your bone
By the grace of your strength we are home

Blood of your blood
Bone of your bone
By the grace of your strength we are home
By the grace of your strength we are home
We are home
We are home
We are home

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zse7aJodkKg

 

Kingston, Jamaica 1983

I am reminded of  Pete Seeger’s adaptation of the old Baptist hymn:

” My life flows on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentation.
I hear the real, thought far off hymn
That hails the new creation
Above the tumult and the strife,
I hear the music ringing;
It sounds an echo in my soul
How can I keep from singing?”

Here is the wondrous Éabha McMahon of Celtic Woman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9hth14hokI