While she stuck with the same melody, she sang the words to "Lift Every Voice and Sing," merging the two songs. In 2008, jazz singer Rene Marie was asked to perform the Star Spangled Banner at Denver's State of the City address. The officers wore black shirts with the logo "#ImWithKap" and sang "Lift Every Voice and Sing."īut the song has also spurred controversy. In 2017, dozens of New York Police Department officers stood in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, who gained national attention for protesting the playing of the national anthem during NFL games. Several teams agreed, including the Washington Wizards, who played the song during a timeout midway through the first quarter during a game against the Golden State Warriors. After the 2012 Trayvon Martin shooting, protesters at Howard University joined around the flagpole at the center of campus, praying and singing "Lift Every Voice and Sing."Ī retired Howard professor, Eugene Williams, spent months last year urging NBA teams to play the song at games during Black History Month. Redmond said she has noticed a revival of the song's use in political protest in recent years, particularly with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King Jr., recited part of the hymn while delivering the benediction at President Barack Obama's first inauguration. Everyone stood, punching fists in the air as soul singer Kim Weston belted out "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Jesse Jackson delivered a rousing speech, and famously invited the masses to sing the black national anthem. As the Star-Spangled Banner was performed, no one stood. 20, 1972, a crowd of more than 100,000 black people gathered at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the Wattstax festival. The strains of "Lift Every Voice" accompanied the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. "Lift Every Voice and Sing" is still sung as a hymn in many Protestant denominations. ("The Star-Spangled Banner" would not be signed into law as the official national anthem until 1931). In 1928, Redmond recalled in her book, a white rabbi, Stephen Wise of the Free Synagogue in New York, wrote to the songwriters praising the hymn as the "noblest anthem I have ever heard," and "a great upwelling of prayer from the soul of a race long wronged but with faith unbroken." He suggested that the song serve as a substitute for other national anthems. The Johnson brothers intended to not only uplift black communities still healing from slavery, but also to send a message to the white public, to illuminate the suffering African Americans had endured for generations.Įven in the 1920s, the song gained wide praise from white, non-Christian observers, demonstrating the broad reach of the hymn. Reaching a large audience was in fact one of the goals of the song's original writers, Redmond said. It was perhaps one of the most high-profile, public stages for the song in recent years, Redmond argued. "Beychella" was the number-one trending topic on Twitter, and the hymn's title was itself a hashtag. college-age students were familiar with "Lift Every Voice and Sing."īut what is clear is Beyoncé's reach. Sue Jewell conducted research showing that only two in three black U.S. "It is not in wide use in the same way with contemporary generations as it has been with my parents and grandparents' generation." In her extensive study of the song's history and role, she's finding that fewer and fewer young people know the lyrics to the hymn. "It's unclear to me to what extent the song resonated with those in the audience," Redmond said. Yet others on Twitter, along with Redmond, wondered how many in the audience could actually identify the song and its significance. It was my pride/rage/power rolled up in 1 #Beychella"Ĭalise tweeted "I just need to know #HBCUfam did anyone else raise their fists in salute when Beyoncé sang Lift every voice and sing? #beychella" Nick Fury tweeted "I cannot stress how much of an important moment in music history, Black history, American history, the entire history of me - it was to hear Beyoncé sing Lift Every Voice & Sing while 100+ screamed to and through the Ancestors.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |