A song broke forth

Our Advent piece for today comes from Fisk University, a Historically Black institution in Tennessee, founded in 1865 to provide education for former slaves and their descendants. “Behold that Star” was written by Thomas W. Talley (1870-1952), chemistry professor, ethnographer and director of the university’s Mozart Society.

We don’t know when it was composed, but when Marian Anderson sang it, it was an arrangement published in 1912.

Last year I wrote about “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow”, and how spirituals were “safe” ways for slaves to communicate with one another, having been denied literacy. I still have issues with using religion to keep the masses in line—which applies to all masses in the face of the oligarchs, but especially to race-based control. Still, I love the imagery of the star of Bethlehem, and I’m willing to put aside my class warfare for the season.

I have a recording of Jessye Norman singing this, but this year I’m giving you the Morehouse-Spelman Choirs.