Art and Power

 Today we started studying a music sheet (partition) entitled (named) Go Down, Moses. It's a Gospel song (this genre is also called negro spiritual).

Very quickly, we understood it was about the prophet Moses, who freed the Hebrew slaves from Egypt, and split the Dead Sea in half. This is the first meaning (signification) of the lyrics, the religious meaning. 

But there's a second meaning, a historical one : the African-Americans who wrote that song also denounced their own situation as slaves in the South of the USA.

There's also a third meaning, a "secret" meaning.

We also talked about the Secession War (or Civil War) in the USA. After that war slavery was abolished.

 

Then we watched a short passage from a movie called 12 Years a Slave. It was about hard work on a sugar cane plantation ; slaves sang a work song. This was slow and repetitive, just like Go Down, Moses. This is also one of the reasons why today's popular songs have repetitive rhythms, they come from these work songs.