Neither the sheet music nor the practice tracks reflect the rhythm changes needed for the words in different verses, particularly in verses 5 and 6. The arrangements are further informed by the Almanac Singers rendition of the song in Harmonically, this arrangement is notated in Dm, but the melody is essentially pentatonic, and could also be considered to be in the modern Dorian mode of the C scale; the 6th note and 3rd notes are omitted in the melody.
The chorus is in unison, except for a tenor harmony. In the verses, the Melody and Tenor lines are in unison, with a harmony part written for Alto voice, and a Bass line. The melody and bass tracks are the same as in arrangement 1. The alto track is new, and the tenor track dispenses with harmony in the verse and reverts to the melody. The target voice uses a piano in each track, except the Alto which uses an oboe sound.
The All Parts track is an experiment, and uses the sounds of a wind quartet: flute, oboe, clarinet and basoon. All Parts. The differences between versions 2. They got word that the company gun-thugs were out to kill him, and he got out of his house, I think out the back door, just before they arrived.
And Mrs Reece said they stuck their guns into the closets, into the beds, even into the piles of dirty linen. One of her two little girls started crying and one of the men said "What are you crying for? We're not after you we're after your old man".
After they had gone she felt so outraged she tore a calendar off the wall and on the back of it wrote the words and put them to the tune of an old hard-shelled Baptist hymn tune, although come to think of it the hymn tune used an old English ballad melody Pete Seeger begins with a stark, descending banjo riff — a foil for the upcoming single-string guitar melody — and then sings the first verse. The chorus is a haunting response to his call, sung by a group of voices.
A community has formed, and what they sing is as much indictment as encouragement. We hear harmonies now, as sympathetic as a friend, as organized as a union. It was an alternative world, one informed by a mix of races and cultures and classes. These folk artists collected and composed songs of the people, performed them in small clubs, union halls, and regional festivals, and made them available through recordings, virtually none of which were available to Florence Reece back in Kentucky.
Seeger had a knack for popularization. He penned some new lyrics in support of the National Maritime Union in From there the song gained immortality. The Freedom Singers, a group formed by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in , rewrote the lyric to reflect their Civil Rights struggle. Len Chandler, a topical singer from Greenwich Village who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King from Selma to Montgomery, wrote his own version:. The question renews itself as each generation struggles against inequality.
The melody proved as durable as the lyrics proved malleable. Although Reece claimed to have borrowed the melody from an old Baptist hymn, the truth is much less sanctified. In every version, fearlessness defines her:. The new lyric has yet to be written, but the circumstances that will inspire it are with us daily.
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