Details:
Audio CD, 2003, 25 Tracks, 60mins, Produced and Recorded by
Alan Govenar, also available on Cassette from 1988
Track Listing:
01
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (listen to MP3 sample); 02 Oh
Mary, Don't You Weep; 03 Gilliam's Town; 04 Down by the Riverside;
05 I'm Going Down by the Big Baptizing; 06
Civil War (listen to MP3 sample); 07 Do Lord Remember
Me; 08 I Will Trust in the Lord; 09 Calvary, Lord; 10
Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen (listen to MP3 sample);
11 The War is On; 12 Run, Sinner, Run; 13 Steal Away; 14 Gilliam's
Storm; 15 Jesus Going to Make Up My Dyin' Bed; 16 Black Man's
Plea for Justice; 17 Poor Man Lazarus; 18 When the Saints
Go Marchin' In; 19 Wade in the Water; 20 All of God's Children
Got Shoes; 21
Lord I Want to be a Christian (listen to MP3 sample);
22 Lord Will Make a Way Some How; 23 He Arose; 24 I'll Fly
Away; 25 What a Friend We Have in Jesus
Listen to samples of this
CD in high-quality, 192k,
MP3 format: Swing
Low, Sweet Chariot, Civil
War, Nobody
Knows the Trouble I've Seen, and Lord
I Want to be a Christian
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The spirituals and poems of Osceola Mays
are remarkable indeed. In them, the past is recounted with
a reverent intensity that expresses the deeply felt emotions
of three generations of black Texans. The harsh realities
of segregation and discrimination are juxtaposed with the
importance of family and community life in these spirituals
and poems learned by Osceola Mays from her mother, Azalene
Douglas, and her grandmother, Laura Walker. Through her long
and active life, Osceola Mays, now seventy-eight, has remembered
the poems of her rural East Texas childhood, knowing that,
as her grandmother told her, they would one day bring her
"good." Together her poems are a metaphor for the
African-American struggle for survival and freedom. Her grandmother
composed one original poem, entitled "The Civil War;"
her mother, two poems, "Gilliam Storm" (which her
father made into a song) and "The War is On." These
poems, together with Osceola's poem, "The Black Man's
Plea for Justice" (composed when she was sixteen), chronicle
in verse three generations of suffering and hope. This audiocassette
tape was produced by Alan Govenar and, funded by Documentary
Arts, Inc.
Alan Govenar recorded Osceola Mays in 1987
at his home in Dallas, Texas. These recordings were first
released in 1988 with the following notes. This CD combines
the original masters with additional recordings.
1988
Osceola Mays sits at the table without moving. She
closes her eyes and starts to say something, but then covers
her mouth with the palm of her hand as if to hold back her
voice. There is a short pause and then she begins to sing.
The words come forth with a steady rhythm and her body sways
forward and back. The notes are long and deep, deliberately
flatted, calling forth memories of the spirituals she heard
as a child, "Trouble I've Seen," "Run, Sinner,
Run," "Steal Away" and others that come and
go as the morning becomes afternoon.
It is not "correct" singing,
she says, offering me a glass of cold water from a plastic
jug placed neatly on the table in front of her. The light
from the window behind her casts her face in the darkness.
The house feels different as the afternoon sun fills the front
room, making the photographs and knickknacks around us seem
more prominent. A pump organ cluttered with stacks of paper
and old 45rpm records sits across from a brown and orange
couch. On the walls are prints of a portrait of Jesus and
a reproduction of Da Vinci's Last Supper hung near a Martin
Luther King memorial plate.
The setting is simple, but the spirituals
and poems of Osceola Mays are remarkable indeed. In them,
the past is recounted with a reverent intensity that expresses
the deeply felt emotions of three generations of black Texans.
The harsh realities of segregation and discrimination are
juxtaposed with the importance of family and community life
in these spirituals and poems learned by Osceola Mays from
her mother, Azalene Douglas, and her grandmother, Laura Walker.
Through her long and active life, Osceola
Mays, now seventy-eight, has remembered the poems of her rural
East Texas childhood, knowing that, as her grandmother told
her, they would one day bring her "good." Her poems
are an expression of the African-American struggle for survival
and freedom. Her grandmother composed one original poem, entitled
"The Civil War;" he mother two poems, two poems,
"Gilliam Storm" (which her father made into a song)
and "The War is On." These poems, together with
Osceola's poem, "The Black Man's Plea for Justice"
(composed when she was sixteen), chronicle in verse three
generations of suffering and hope.
2003
In 1989 Osceola traveled to France as part of the "Texas
in Paris" tour, organized by Documentary Arts and presented
at the Maison des Cultures du Monde in Paris and at the Centro
Flog in Florence, Italy. Osceola, now 92 years old, is still
an active member of the Good Street Baptist Church and has
moved to an apartment nearby. She is the subject of the video
"Osceola: Stories, Songs and Poems," produced by
Documentary Arts and the book Osceola: Memories of a Sharecropper's
Daughter (New York: Hyperion Books for Children), collected
and edited by Alan Govenar (2001 Orbis Pictus Honor Award,
National Council of Teachers of English; 2000 Boston Globe-Horn
Book Honor Award, First Prize, Nonfiction; 2000 New York Book
Festival, First Place, Children’s Trade, Nonfiction).
Alan Govenar, 2003
See also the film, "Osceola
Mays; Stories, Songs and Poems" and the audio cassette
"Texas in Paris" |
