December 2015 Song of the Month

“Go Tell it on the Mountain” 
John W. Work Jr. 1907 

Picture the bitter days of slavery… 

During this time on American plantations, black workers created a unique form of song – the Negro Spiritual. This form of music – originally unaccompanied by instruments, just the voices creating the sounds of beautiful harmonies – has been preserved and is widely recognized today. 

John Wesley Work Jr., the son of a choir director in Nashville, is credited with preserving and publishing many of the Negro Spirituals that are common today. For example “Go Tell it On the Mountain”, a song created without instruments, just the voices of men and women during the time of slavery singing to proclaim a wonderful message. Tracing the history of this song brings us back to 1879 by the Jubilee Singers who preformed it though it was widely unknown at the time. 
John Work wrote two new stanzas for the song and it was first published in his 1907 work titled “Work’s Folk Songs of the Negro as Sung on the Plantations.” 

This song is now a classic hymn that proclaims Christ’s birth, and to black slaves during this time, the birth of a liberating Savior that needed to be shouted from the mountain tops. This message is still relevant and needs proclaiming today, Jesus Christ is Born! 

-Ryan