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Brer Rabbit Christology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Francesca Aran Murphy
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Extract

James Cone begins his book about The Spirituals and Blues by defining this music as ‘the power of song in the struggle for black survival’. The quality of spirituals and blues is ‘an optimism that uses the pessimism of life as raw material out of which it creates its own strength’. The use of human life at its roughest as a source of power is also the meaning of comedy. Comedy is not just a funny ha-ha plot, it is a milieu. It is a milieu over which love presides. Speaking about the earthiness of the blues, Cone observes, ‘People cannot love physically and spiritually ... until they have been up against the edge of life, experiencing the hurt and pain of existence.’ The painful, raw sounds of the blues and the spirituals venture further into the comic milieu than do Hollywood romantic ‘comedies.’

Richie Havens used to sing a spiritual called ‘Motherless Child’

      Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
      Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
      Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
      A long ways from home,
      A long ways from home.
      Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone,
      Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone,
      Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone,
      A long ways from home,
      A long ways from home.
      Sometimes I feel like a feather in the air,
      Sometimes I feel like a feather in the air,
      Sometimes I feel like a feather in the air,
      And I spread my wings and I fly,
      I spread my wings and I fly.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 83 , Issue 974 , April 2002 , pp. 188 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 Cone, James H., The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation (Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 1997), p. 1Google Scholar.

2 ibid., p. 87, citing Howard Thurman's Deep River.

3 ibid., p. 114.

4 Johnson, James Weldon, God's Trombones: Some Negro Sermons in Verse (George Allen and Unwin, London, 1929), p. 20Google Scholar.

5 Hughes, Langston and Bontemps, Arna, ed., The Book Of Negro Folklore (Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1958), pp. 245–246Google Scholar.

6 Cone, James H., God Of The Oppressed (Seabury Press, 1975, revised edition, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 1979), p. xiiiGoogle Scholar. My italics.

7 Watson, Andrew P., “Negro Primitive Religious Services,” in Johnson, Clifton H., ed., God Struck Me Dead: Voices Of Ex‐Slaves, (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland, Ohio, 1969, 1993), p. 10Google Scholar.

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24 Hughes & Bontemps, ed., The Book of Negro Folklore, p 96.

25 Brewer, ed., American Negro Folklore, p. 6.

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27 Cone, God Of The Oppressed, p. 22.

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32 Brewer, ed., American Negro Folklore, pp. 3–4

33 Cone, God Of The Oppressed, p. 109.

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