It's All in the Phrasing

It's all about the phrase when it comes to a song right. Not 100 percent, but when discussing the many different songs throughout time and generations, a specific song can be phrased, paraphrased, reshape and remixed from different stand points and meanings through multiple artists and genres. For the song "Kumbaya", where its roots come from the enslaved Africans who were enslaved in the coasts of Savannah, Georgia and Edisto Island, South Carolina (who would go on to become the Gullah-Geechee people) would bring languages and iterations from the Motherland to the Christian faith in the New World as a call for freedom, "Kumbaya, my Lord, Kumbaya" then would be reinterpreted into "Come by here my Lord, Come by here". That is a rich legacy and history of musical reinterpretation that wouldn't stop at "Kumbaya", especially for the African-American people.

Another example would be the freedom songs, during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. "I Woke Up This Morning With My Mind, Stayed on Freedom" a famous "Freedom Rides" song that comes from "I Woke Up This Morning With My Mind, Stayed on Jesus". Even Motown did it with the Supremes' 1966 classic, "You Can't Hurry Love" was originally from an old gospel song, "You Can't Hurry God". It's all about the "phrasing" and the reinterpretation of song and music which is going to be the heart of a lot of the cultural history topics we'll get into on this space. Understanding the deeper meaning behind a lot of what we never really considered before about the history of music and musical culture.