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| (James Weldon Johnson) |
These weren’t just any sermons – they were spellbinding renditions of themes ranging from Creation to Judgment Day by a man who was as natural an orator as Oprah herself. Johnson (1871-1938) was not only a gifted orator, but also a poet, songwriter, journalist, author, professor, lawyer, civil rights activist, anthologist, and politician. His endeavors ranged from being Theodore Roosevelt’s U.S. consul in South and Central America to writing the melody for Dem Bones to being a major promoter of the Harlem
Renaissance.
The sermons that Winfrey recited, Johnson’s most famous ones, were from his 1927 book God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. Johnson had categorized these as “folk sermons” in that they reflected the style of preaching he had heard so many times as a child. In this folk style of preaching, essentially the same key sermons would be passed on from preacher to preacher, gathering momentum along the way. His use of the trombone metaphor was in honor of the trombone’s ability to resoundingly express the wide range of human emotions.
Since (many May 21, 2011 warnings to the contrary) Judgment Day has not yet come, here’s a glimpse of
James Weldon Johnson’s interpretation:
And I feel Old Earth a-shuddering--
And I see the graves a-bursting--
And I hear a sound,
A blood-chilling sound.
What sound is that I hear?
It’s the clicking together of the dry bones,
Bone to bone -- the dry bones…
The vivid combination of Johnson’s descriptions and Winfrey’s renditions must have certainly made people
sit up and take notice when they heard such a mighty “word of the Lord.”
Resources
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/win0int-1
http://timeshadowed.comlu.com/TheJudgementDay.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dem_Bones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_Trombones:_Seven_Negro_Sermons_in_Verse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Weldon_Johnson
Copyright May 23, 2011 by Linda Van Slyke All Rights Reserved
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