Redemption Songs: Go Down Moses; Come, Come Ye Saints; No Woman No Cry; Redemption Song (Louis Armstrong, New York Dolls, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Bob Marley)

I once wanted to compile an anthology entitled Losers.  Granta magazine beat me to it, which is perfect—at least if I want to maintain status as a loser.  I don’t necessarily, but I once did.  Part of it was self-esteem issues to be sure, but it was more than that.  There is a spiritual nature to losing that just isn’t found in the winning camp—a release, an acceptance, a humility, perhaps even a willingness to hand things over to God.  In my faith, it is considered to be the learning place in the pride-cycle.  We’re not necessarily encouraged to seek it out, and should avoid it if at all possible, but it is recognized that sometimes only through great loss can we gain the humility we need to grow.

There is an idea close to losing, but not quite, which is redemption, the willingness to follow loss through until integrity pulls the believer out the other side as redeemed.  However, unlike some forms of loss, the losing isn’t necessarily the result of one's actions—rather the loss is driven by the imperfections of others, by the cruelty of humanity.

I don’t know where my passion for social justice came from.  I haven’t lived the type of life where I’ve been effective in changing anything around me, but still that has been my focus from early on.

I wrote my first poem in ninth grade.  I was bullied a lot in school that year.  We were Mormon and had just moved into a heavily Baptist neighborhood in Dallas. I also wasn’t very cool.  Together, these made me an easy target.

One day, after receiving a particular humiliating verbal beating, I came home and wrote the following:

Whose beast are these who kill to cry,

Who drink the blood of their brother’s sigh? 

These, these are His to keep,

Which he loves, forgives,

And hopes to keep.

I’m not a 100% sure what I meant, as it was an instinctive cry rather than a rational discourse, but I do know it meets the criteria of what I call a redemption song.   A redemption song is written from a place of injustice; it hands over survival to a supreme power outside the suppressed people and maintains justice (not necessarily punishment) will eventually be fulfilled.

There are many such songs.  Here I will mention four:  “Go Down Moses,” “Come, Come Ye Saints,” “No Woman No Cry” and “Redemption Song.”  

Go Down Moses

("Go Down Moses" by Louis Armstrong)

“Go Down Moses,” first published in 1872 by the Jubilee Singers, is a traditional African-American spiritual based on Exodus 7:26.  The song lyrics are as follows:

When Israel was in Egypt's land: Let my people go,

Oppress'd so hard they could not stand, Let my People go.

Go down, Moses,

Way down in Egypt's land,

Tell old Pharaoh,

Let my people go.

An earlier version, which expresses a righteous indignation similar to when Christ enters the temple to turn over the tables of the money changers, proceeds as follows:

The Lord, by Moses, to Pharaoh said: Oh! let my people go.

If not, I'll smite your first-born dead—Oh! let my people go.

Oh! go down, Moses,

Away down to Egypt's land,

And tell King Pharaoh

To let my people go.

Embedded in the song, like all redemption songs, is the affirmation, I am and I will carry on.  You may chain me, you may beat me, you may even kill me, but through the power of my God, I will be free.

Come, Come Ye Saints

("Come, Come Ye Saints" by members of the New York Dolls)

The redemption song I was raised on was “Come, Come Ye Saints,” a Mormon hymn written in 1846 by William Clayton.  Originally titled “All Is Well,” it was composed at Locust Creek as the Mormons were fleeing Nauvoo, Illinois, a shining city the Mormons had built after fleeing persecution in Missouri.  In 1844 Nauvoo had a population of 12,000, rivaling the size of Chicago.

On October 27, 1838 Missouri Governor Liburn Boggs issued Missouri Executive Order 44, also known as the Extermination Order in which Boggs officially declared, “the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description.”

What history has verified, and what Mormons have always known, is that tensions rose primarily due to the growing electoral and economic power of the Mormon community.  The scene to a great extent was repeated in Nauvoo.

This is the background of the hymn that includes the following lyrics:

And should we die before our journey’s though,

Happy day! All is well!

We then are free from toil and sorrow, too:

With the just we shall dwell!

But if our lives are spared again

To see the Saints their rest obtain,

Oh, how we’ll make this chorus swell—

All is well!  All is well!

("Come, Come Ye Saints" by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir)

No Woman No Cry

The next two redemption songs were made popular by Bob Marley.  “No Woman No Cry” is often assumed to be his composition, but its origins are not certain.  The credits were given to a friend of Marley’s, Vincent Ford, but it’s unclear whether Ford wrote the song or whether Marley simply credited it to him.  Either way, the royalties received by Ford ensured the survival of a soup kitchen in Trenchtown, a ghetto of Kingston, Jamaica, which Ford  ran.   

Like “Go Down Moses” and “Come, Come Ye Saints,”  “No Woman No Cry” is a song of community coming together for survival:

Said—said—said I remember when we used to sit

In the government yard in Trenchtown, yeah!

And then Georgie would make the fire lights,

I seh, logwood burnin’ through the nights, yeah!

Then we would cook cornmeal porridge, say,

Of which I’ll share with you, yeah!

My feet is my only carriage

And so I’ve got to push on through.

Oh, while I’m gone,

Everything’s gonna be all right!

Everything’s gonna be all right!

Redemption Song

And finally, we come to Marley’s “Redemption Song” which provides the perfect label for songs of community, struggle and redemption. Marley wrote the song sometime around 1979 after having been diagnosed with cancer.  It was inspired by a speech given by Marcus Garvey in Nova Scotia in October 1937 and published in Black Magazine.

How long shall they kill our prophets,

While we stand aside and look?  Ooh!

Some say it’s just a part of it:

We’ve got to fulfil de book.

Won’t you help to sing

These songs of freedom?—

’Cause all I ever have:

Redemption songs;

Redemption songs;

Redemption songs

For the oppressed everywhere; may they have the courage to stand up and declare I AM!

& for those who make it to the Promised Land; may they not forget their roots and what they stand for..

Links to Wikipedia sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Down_Moses

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come,_Come,_Ye_Saints

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_Order_(Mormonism)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Woman,_No_Cry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redemption_Song