Peace Be Still by Robert Marovich

Author:Robert Marovich [Marovich, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: EDUCATION / Special Education / General
ISBN: 9780252044113
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2021-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

“Shine on Me”

Cleveland and the Angelic Choir return to classic hymnody with a B-flat rendition of “Shine on Me.” The melody comes from “Maitland,” a nineteenth- century composition by George N. Allen (1812–77). The hymn’s chorus, based loosely on Psalm 31:16 (“Make thy face to shine upon thy servant: save me for thy mercies’ sake”) has its origins in a folk spiritual. It was recorded by African American artists as early as 1923, when the Wiseman Sextette sang it for Billy Sunday music director Homer Rodeheaver’s Rainbow Records; in 1927 by the professional jubilee choir Sandhill’s Sixteen (Victor); and in 1929 by Blind Willie Johnson as “Let Your Light Shine on Me” (Columbia).91 Country gospel singers Ernest Phipps and His Holiness Singers also recorded the hymn for Victor in 1928. In the introduction to his recorded version, blues guitarist Huddie William “Leadbelly” Ledbetter (1888–1949) explained that “Shine on Me” was sung on plantations by African Americans prior to emancipation.

Cleveland opens “Shine on Me” with his now almost obligatory spoken introduction. “Sometimes our ways get mighty dark,” he intones in his sandpaper-rough baritone, “and we need the Lord to come into our heart.” Unconsciously echoing Leadbelly, Cleveland informs the choir and live audience that “Shine on Me” was sung in the “little wooden church on the hill” as a long-meter hymn. To render a long-meter, or lining-out, hymn in the African American church, a church deacon lifts, or raises, a lyric line and invites the congregation to sing it back to him in a heavily ornamented melody. While this recorded version maintains the drawn-out tempo, it is not sung as a long-meter hymn; there is no antiphonal interplay with the Angelic Choir or congregation. Rather, it is sung as a congregational hymn and in harmony. As a result, “Shine on Me” is a showcase for the vocal power of the Angelic Choir (fortified, undoubtedly, by singing from the congregation) and for Cleveland’s improvisational skills, which portend his calling to religious ministry. Hason and Herriot follow Cleveland and the choir with Roberta Martin-esque ornamentation from the middle section of the keyboard.

Shelley finds Hason’s keyboard work particularly interesting: “The rumbling chords in the left hand of the piano fill the space while the choir and soloists are breathing. It’s like a performance of freedom, and a performance of pregnant pauses.”92

It is interesting that, when Cleveland declares, “Sometimes our ways get mighty dark,” not only does he restate the cross-bearing current that runs throughout the album, but it is possible he is making a veiled reference to discrimination and racially motivated violence. The metaphor of a lighthouse lighting the way toward salvation certainly fits on an album brimming with imagery of raging storms and wind-tossed seas. And by invoking pastoral “little wooden church” imagery, Cleveland is reminding the congregation and choir not only of their shared southern religious roots but of the transformational power of traditional worship. The singers, the live recording audience, and, in turn, the record-buying public can leave their troubles on

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