Amazing Grace on the "Slave Scale"
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Stumble ThisAmazing Grace and many of the Negro Spirituals can be played by using only the black keys on the piano.
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slave scale,wintley phipps,spiritual,slavery,pentatonic,john newton Amazing Grace on the "Slave Scale"
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This guy seems to me to be working a "schtick" he has well developed to appeal to the emotional experience of the southern baptist type mindset.
Was amazing to watch, though. Gotta say it.
*promote
(I guess that was a pretty long treatise)
Although that is a very beautifully orchestrated argument, I do believe that there was a specific intent of the song's writer and it has to do with Christianity.
...but I don't know, I could be wrong.
Someday I'm going to write a long treatise here about why this song and this story have very little to do with god's grace and being connected through JC. This is about awe and gratitude. Christians believe there is some force that is doling out goodwill and that we are unwitting and undeserving of this goodwill, unless we respond in a Christian way.
I read a great quote recently: "Christian is a wonderful noun, but a terrible adjective." I have to agree. I think the feeling you're describing, the feeling hinted at by Phipps, is transcendental. As Newton emerged from his cabin that day, and heard the dirge rising up from the hold, something in his brain clicked. No doubt, "Unknown" was sold into bondage exactly on schedule, and so the song did not save him in a meaningful way, but unbeknownst to him, that song did have an effect. Newton began to reconsider his role in things, and left the slave trade. He was a vocal proponent of abolition in England. It would be many, many years before he would put pen to paper and write out Amazing Grace (he experienced his conversion moment in 1748, and composed AG between 1760 and 1770) but nevertheless, the wordless song never truly left him. He chose to share its melody with those who'd never set foot on a slave ship, and found that, somehow, the effect was sustained.
Now everything I've just mentioned can be looked at in a non-Christian context, and it would remain true. It should be said, though, that the presence of Christianity and its memes made it easier for Newton to become aware of just how far he'd strayed in his life. Given the number of unrepentant slave captains who called themselves Christians, it does not necessarily follow that Newton's salvation was due to his turn to Christianity, but it certainly helped. And it also helped all the slaves who would have found passage in the hold of his ship, but did not, thanks to his conversion. Again, Christianity didn't do it, but it was a 'hook' upon which Newton could hang this unsettling feeling in his belly.
Kurt Vonnegut notes much the same in a speech he gave at Clowes Hall in 2007. He starts by pointing out that, while Marx said that 'religion was the opium of the lower classes', he should have been taken literally. Opiates were a wonderful class of drug that numbed the pain, and who knew pain better than the working classes? He continues, "The most spiritually splendid phenomenon of my lifetime is how African-American citizens have maintained their dignity and self-respect, despite their having been treated by white Americans, both in and out of government, and simply because of their skin color, as though they were contemptible and loathsome, and even diseased. Their churches have surely helped them to do that. So there's Karl Marx again. There's Jesus again."
I guess the question is, could John Newton have composed Amazing Grace without believing in the Magic Man Who Lives in the Sky? Maybe. Probably. But it certainly helped.