Oh Mary Don't You Weep

This week's theme song, Oh Mary Don't You Weep, made me think a lot about religion and the impact it has on people and their lives. I never grew up with religion of my own, and as a child I had never thought about the concept of religion or devotion even though I had grown up with biblical references and religious people all around me. It wasn't until I got older, into my teenage years, when I began to understand religion more than a simple term being thrown around, and finally as an actual belief and practice with the power to change a person's entire outlook on their world.
It seems almost like a fairytale to me, because I love hearing about religion and I love learning about religion but I don't know what is like to experience religion. And that is a gap between my head and my heart that I'm not sure what to do about, because the thought of pursuing religion has not settled in with me yet.

But when I see practices of religion, I am intrigued. I am enraptured in trying to understand what it must feel like to have such complete devotion to a divine entity that is not there, in front of you to touch, but that something that is intangible yet all so powerful. It boggles my mind! Like a paradox or a riddle I can't get to solving because I don't put my pencil down on it. But even amidst my personal contemplations about religion and what it can mean to a person, I still am able to become so moved by the voices of Gospel singers when they deliver their hymns. The sentiments and power I get out of listening to song is the closest glimpse I have to experiencing the divine.

Lomax words it perfectly:
"Anyone who has visited a rural Negro church, where the congregation sings from the heart instead of out of hymn-books, cannot fail to have been touched by the fire, the solemn dignity, the grand simplicity of the Negro spirituals."

It describes what I feel so perfectly when I hear the voices of Gospel singers. They sing from the heart and the soul-- and every time they do I am touched by their spirit even as a stranger to their religion and customs. I love the way the can completely change the way I feel about the song just from the style they sing in. I love Swan Silvertones' jazzy, bluesy rendition that makes me fill with upbeat joy, then Leadybelly's version sounds like a campfire singalong song with his jaunty vocals and instrument (same with Pete Seeger's cheerful country banjo tune), and Inez Andrews who translate her deep love and devotion straight through her hearty, strong voice. Though I enjoyed listening to Swan Silvertone most, Inez Andrews and the Andrewnettes take my breath away the most. She begins her song with the line "I'm just so glad that the Lord love me" and it makes me wonder how she must experience her world with such a strong foundation of love and support from God.

For one thing, I hope that whatever I say, I do not make it sound offensive-- because that is by no means anything I mean. The song Oh Mary Don't You Weep is a slave song that is imbued with hope and resistance and culture and history-- it is full of healing power and is a symbol of liberation that goes way back into time. The significance of the song is that it can bridge the gap between the past and the present, telling the story of pain and freedom that is understood through all ages.

You Are My Sunshine

I created this piece during a time when I was feeling my most vulnerable. I listened to "You Are My Sunshine" at 1 AM sitting on the floor of my bedroom and the emotional quality of the song hit me hard. I grew up with this familiar tune floating in and out of my memory and always known it to be a sweet ode to love. Hearing it by myself carefully and in full, the song took on an entirely different persona-- I was taken by how much I'd misunderstood it. Such a happy verse became only one part of a larger whole that suffers, and has suffered, beyond the surface level. It is much more than what meets the eye. 

I think the song embodies the word 'bittersweet' perfectly. It shows the dual nature of love, embedding sentiments of heartache and loss with the feelings of longing and passion to illustrate a complex and inexplicably human experience. When I hear this song I remember the complete sense of comfort and belongingness I feel when I am in the embrace of somebody dear to me. Those moments when you're swathed in the security of somebody else's arms, and the weight of their existence starts to seep in and fortify your own. The feelings don't last forever, and sometimes, for a long time, you just can't find it back again. But the memory of what it feels like can always make me feel a little bit more whole. It's that sweet comfort that is sunshine to me.

Down in the Valley

This is the image that came to my mind as I listened to the many different versions of "Down in the Valley," or "Birmingham Jail." To be specific, the version that was playing in the background while I drew this image was sang by an anonymous artist, one with an incredibly moving voice. The feeling I got from the song was nostalgic and longing, like the feeling you'd get while staring out into a vast open valley and thinking deeply about a lost love or contemplating your life. Of the different versions, I liked listening to the upbeat and soulful voices of Burl Ives and the Ikettes best, but the greatest emotions were elicited from the more heartfelt and raw voices of Lonesome Valley and Bob Ross. I picture tranquility and somberness and loneliness all at once, the feeling one experiences in deep pensive solitude. 

First Song

小兔子乖乖

I grew up in the neighborhoods of suburban California, but I was brought up under the wings of my two Chinese grandparents. My grandma and grandpa came to the United States from their small hometown in Sichuan, China back in 1997 when I was born. It was the first time they had ever travelled outside China, an elderly couple in their 60's who left everything they knew back home to take care of their granddaughter halfway across the world. My grandparents didn't know the customs of America, so they recreated their own Chinese environment at home and raised me in it. My earliest memory of a song is a Chinese nursery rhyme telling the story of a rabbit who is told not to open the door no matter who is knocking, especially when mother is not home. My grandma would sing it with me as I read the lyrics off a nursery rhyme book, and that intimate memory is what I look back on now and cherish, because it is in those moments where all the cultural and generational differences between my grandparents and I disappear, and only feelings we are experience are ones of tenderness and love as together we share the tune of that youthful rhyme.