The plaints and lamentations of slaves live on in Negro spirituals. On Feb. 8, 200 singers in Cobb County raise their voices to celebrate those songs.
"The songs of the slaves represent the sorrows rather than the joys of his heart and he is relieved by them only as an aching is relieved by its tears," said Oral Moses, a Kennesaw State University music professor who organized the performance at 3 p.m. Sunday at Zion Baptist Church in Marietta.
Members of seven choirs from churches around the Marietta square and the Cobb Symphony Chorus create the mass choir. The program is mostly a cappella singing, and the audience will be invited to join in on some songs.
" 'In that Great Gettin' Up Mornin' will knock the roof off that place," Moses said. " 'Jesus Is a Rock' is one of those roof-raising spirituals."
Zion Baptist choir member George Williams, 73, of Marietta performed with the Southern Echoes in the 1950s. "I sang mostly gospel songs, fast, upbeat," said Williams, who owned a janitorial service for 50 years. The spirituals in Sunday's program are slower and more meaningful, he said. He's learned the history of Negro spirituals in Moses' workshops, one of which is set for 9 a.m. today at Zion Baptist's museum.
Moses, Williams said, "got us all singing on the old, slow songs. It's awesome. I haven't sung those songs in years. It's just a joy."
Sunday's chorus is composed of choirs from Zion Baptist, First United Methodist, First Baptist, Pleasant Grove Baptist, Turner Chapel AME, First Presbyterian and St. James Episcopal churches.
"It's not African-American music. It's American music," Moses said. Congress agreed in 2007 when it named the Negro spiritual a national treasure.
There are coded messages within spirituals, Moses said. The haunting "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning" and "Hush, Hush Somebody's Calling My Name" are about being ever ready to escape on the Underground Railroad, a secret network of routes and safe houses used by slaves to reach free territories.
In "Gonna Shout All Over God's Heaven," the singer laments that he doesn't have anything on Earth but when he gets home—to heaven—he will.
Moses has pulled together custodians and college professors, the young and the retired, office workers, coaches and medical personnel. "You get them together and this incredible sound comes out of it. I'm just awed by it," he said.
For Williams, preserving the Negro spiritual through performances is the past meeting the future. "Our fore parents sung those songs," he said. "It means a lot to hand them down from generation to generation."
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