THE BIRTH OF A “SPIRITUAL”

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 72, 18 December 1928, Page 12

THE BIRTH OF A “SPIRITUAL”

NEGRO SONG OF THE FLORIDA HURRICANE.

The recent typhoon in Florida _ saw the birth of a new “spiritual.” ‘ Its quality is perhaps not very remarkable, but the striking fact about it is that it was observed in the making. It was composed on the shores of Lake Okechobee in Florida.

What happened there cannot be known in Europe, for the story has never been fully told even in New York. The lake lies in flat land at dead sea level, like much other land in Florida, which cannot drain itself once it is flooded. The wind from the east swept the lake almost out of its bed, and wind and water together produced appalling suffering. The luckiest were drowned or killed at once. Some escaped after incredible adventures; others, after adventures as terrible, met death by drowning or accident when they had exhausted every resource. The whole countryside for days afterwards was a scene of desolation into which relief workers could not penetrate, because floods covered the land and wreckage made the roads impassable. In this wilderness hundreds of negro refugees lived in trees or on floating rafts, suffering from hunger as they had before suffered from exposure, and out of their agony they made the song which the officials of the Red Cross have now recorded ;— On the sixteenth of September In the year nineteen twenty-eight, God started riding early And he rode till very late. He rode out on the ocean. Chained the lightning to his wheel. Stepped on the land at West Palm Bench. And the wicked hearts did yield. Chorus. In flic storm, oh. in the sforin, Lord, somebody got drowned, Got drowned, Lord, In the storm. It is an interesting revelation of how a primitive people, living in huts and log-houses without our modern protection against the elements, could return Io their ancient ways and around the refugee camp fires produce a real “folk’ song.