Sunday Gospel Set . 47 | Blood on the Fields, by Wynton Marsalis - a sampler.

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Join us every Sunday to give praise with the Sunday Gospel Set on Radio Roofscape. This week we're sampling Wynton Marsalis's sprawling and flawed 1994 Blood on the Fields, following the trials of a slace couple and their escape to freedom. Here's the set list, a series of short excerpts from most of the sections of this 3-1/2 hour work.

Calling the Indians Out
Move Over
You Don't Hear No Drums
The Market Place
Soul for Sale
Plantation Coffee March
Work Song (Blood on the Fields)

Lady's Lament
Flying High
Oh We Have a Friend in Jesus
God Don't Like Ugly
Juba and a O'Brown Squaw
Follow the Drinking Gourd
My Soul Fell Down
Forty Lashes
What a Fool I've Been
Back to Basics

I Hold Out My Hand
Look and See
The Sun Is Gonna Shine
Will the Sun Come Out?
The Sun Is Gonna Shine
Chant to Call the Indians Out
Calling the Indians Out
Follow the Drinking Gourd
Freedom Is In the Trying
Due North

Image ... Boston Vigilance Committee poster.

Sunday Gospel Set . 45 | Secret code of the spirituals

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Join us every Sunday to give praise with the Sunday Gospel Set on Radio Roofscape. This week we're listening for the secret codes that the slaves hid inside the spirituals they sang. Our featured video is Yolanda Rhodes singing Wade in the Water. Here's the current set list ...

Yolanda Rhodes - Wade in the Water
Beyonce - Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
The Ishmel Sisters - Follow the Drinking Gourd
Sacred Harp 87 - Oh Canaan, Sweet Canaan
Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon - Steal Away to Jesus
Fisk University Jubilee Quartet - I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray

On the eve of his escape to freedom in the company of a few fellow captives, the mood on Frederick Douglass' plantation was jubilant. That happiness and determination were coded into song to keep their spirits up and steel them for the trials ahead.

We were, at times, remarkably buoyant, singing hymns and making joyous exclamations, almost as triumphant in their tone as if we reached a land of freedom and safety. A keen observer might have detected in our repeated singing of

O Canaan, sweet Canaan,
I am bound for the land of Canaan,

something more than a hope of reaching heaven. We meant to reach the north - and the north was our Canaan.

I thought I heard them say,
There were lions in the way,
I don't expect to Star
Much longer here.
Run to Jesus - shun the danger
I don't expect to stay
Much longer here.

was a favorite air, and had a double meaning. In the lips of some, it meant the expectation of a speedy summons to a world of spirits; but, in the lips of our company, it simply meant, a speedy pilgrimage toward a free state, and deliverance from all the evils and dangers of slavery.

My Bondage and My Freedom. Frederick Douglass, 1855.