Go Tell It On the Mountain

    Y'all, I'm struggling here. Work's been more intense than I'm used to, I have visitor's coming in less than a week, and the seasonal mood disorder is really starting to hit its stride. I am le tired.

    Thankfully this version of Go Tell it on the Mountain is a funky hit of dopamine with some deeply satisfying horns, bass, and snappy drums. Don't even get me started on those back up vocals, oooh.

 This is a cover of an African American spiritual song with roots going all the way back to 1865. Spirituals were composed by enslaved Black Americans, and then memorised and orally passed around. Post-emancipation saw these songs being set down in print and compiled by experts and authorities such as John Wesley Work Jr.

    It's not at all difficult to see and understand what a promise of salvation and freedom, the notion of being equal and loved by a universal power would mean to an enslaved population. Perhaps it's just me, but I hear that joy and need so much more forcefully and loudly in spiritual music versus that calm, and contained European hymns.