![]() The "go, tell," which initially applied to the singers caroling on the university campus, is a signal for us to leave the comfortable confines of Christian worship and "go, tell" the message of Christ's redemption to the whole world.īecause of the spiritual's oral tradition, variants in text and melody exist. While the three stanzas tell the essence of the Christmas story, the refrain underscores the missionary impetus of the Christian church: "go and make disciples of all nations" (Matt. The refrain theme comes from Old Testament passages in which praise to God for his acts of deliverance was often shouted, both literally and metaphorically, from the mountaintops (Isa. Later, his arrangement for use in choral concerts by the Fisk Jubilee Singers helped to popularize the spiritual. ![]() "I know he composed the verses." John, III, recalled that when he was a child, the students at Fisk University began singing this before daybreak on Christmas morning, going from building to building. In American Negro Songs and Spiritual (1940), John Wesley Work, III, attributes the newer text to his uncle Frederick J. Companion to the United Methodist Hymnal, p. In 1940 John Work, III, had the songs copyrighted and published in his book American Negro Songs.” The verses of these songs were published by John Work, II, in place of the original ones which could not be found. ![]() ![]() According to Edith McFall Work, widow of John Wesley Work, III: The song may date back to earlier sources, but evidently the original text was lost. The text of this beloved spiritual was first published in Folk Song of the American Negro (1907), a study of African American folk music by John Wesley Work, Jr. ![]()
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