This feature is a part of Ocean State Sessions.
Sundays are very busy for Frances Elayne Johnson. It’s the culmination of a week’s worth of work at Beneficent Congregational Church in Providence. After the morning’s service is over, she’ll rest, and start again on Monday.
“The work on Sundays that I do is only the end result. This is a process that starts actually tomorrow, on Monday, to decide what’s going to happen the next Sunday. And the process itself involves weaving what we sing into what is being preached, (and) what the scripture is.”
Johnson is the Minister of Music at Beneficent. On piano, the music she plays serves as the backdrop to the church’s services. She also decides which songs the choir will perform each week.
“I have done everything from Bill Withers to Tina Turner to Foreigner, to Paul Simon. It’s not just your everyday church music. They really allow me to experiment, to stretch, as long as it fits the message.”
Johnson’s work extends beyond Beneficent as the artistic director of RPM Voices of Rhode Island, a non-profit 501(c) (3) arts organization. Its mission is to preserve the tradition of African American choral music. A tradition, that Johnson says, is fading.
“I don’t know another choir around here, unless it’s a choir from a Black church, that is singing, preserving, and promoting African American choral music. And it’s a challenge because you’ve got to go looking for it.”
RPM has performed songs like “How I Got Over”, a gospel hymn first composed in 1951 and performed by Clara Ward. It was popularized by artists like Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin.
But it’s another song, Johnson says, that is most closely tied to RPM’s mission.
“‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’, which is known as the Black national anthem. We have been singing that almost since our inception.”
James Weldon Johnson wrote “Lift Every Voice and Sing” as a hymn in 1900. His brother, John Rosamond Johnson, created the musical arrangement, which has accompanied the song ever since. The Johnsons worked together in the NAACP, where James Weldon eventually assumed a leadership role in the organization. In recent years, the song has had a resurgence. It’s now performed at the Super Bowl, and in 2020, was sung at protests across the country in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
Johnson says the song’s message has endured for over 120 years, and hopes RPM can help preserve its legacy.
“I think every Black person should be familiar with those lyrics because they tell the story of our history, the story of the struggle, and the end of the first verse says, “Let us march on ‘til victory.” (The song) is the story that the struggle is not over, that it continues.”
Check out RPM’s performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” on Season 5 of Ocean State Sessions, as well as the lyrics to the song below:
Lift every voice and sing,
‘Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on ‘til victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
‘Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.
