Boundless Gratitude: Songs of the month

• MP3 play whole song, hi-fi (broadband)
• MP3 play whole song, lo-fi (modem)

This song originally written for school children to sing in 1900 on the anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, this song became the "national anthem" of African-Americans and the theme song of the NAACP, which was originally started as an anti-lynching society. I call my version the centennial, because it was released 100 years after the original. It is the first song that I ever sat down to try and make my own instrumental arrangement of. It's also the closing song on my first CD (Musical Storytelling, re-released on CD Baby today) and the second of two songs of the week. It took me 17 years to learn to both play the music that I had in my head smoothly and to sing it at the same time. This is also the first song that I ever copyrighted, struggling proudly with my new and still rudimentary skills at music notation to record the song. This was at least a year before I was able to actually make digital sound recordings.

Back in 2000, I tried to remember what I was thinking when I first sat down, circa 1983, to make my own arrangement:

"This song was written a hundred years ago to remember the past while dealing with the present and looking to the future. I used to play it on my harmonica but never could seem to make it sound like the celebration that I felt it should be. I still remember the time that I played it on my harmonica for my infant son and he started crying. Shortly after that I sat down without any skill or training, just my guitar and dogged determination to come up with something that people could dance to. Seventeen years later, it’s still a work in progress. Shortly after punching a hole in the finish of my beloved Spanish guitar while trying to really make the music burn, however, I decided that done or not, the idea had definitely grown big enough to share. Judge for yourself."

Enjoy

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.