John Brown’s Body

John Brown’s Body” (originally known as “John Brown’s Song”) is a United States marching song about the abolitionist John Brown. The song was popular in the Union during the American Civil War. The tune arose out of the folk hymn tradition of the American camp meeting movement of the late 18th and early 19th century. According to an 1889 account, the original John Brown lyrics were a collective effort by a group of Union soldiers who were referring both to the famous John Brown and also, humorously, to a Sergeant John Brown of their own battalion. Various other authors have published additional verses or claimed credit for originating the John Brown lyrics and tune. The “flavor of coarseness, possibly of irreverence”  374  led many of the era to feel uncomfortable with the earliest “John Brown” lyrics. This in turn led to the creation of many variant versions of the text that aspired to a higher literary quality. The most famous of these is Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, which was written when a friend suggested, “Why do you not write some good words for that stirring tune?” Kimball suggests that President Lincoln made this suggestion to Howe, though other sources do not agree on this point.: Numerous informal versions and adaptations of the lyrics and music have been created from the mid-1800s to the present, making “John Brown’s Body” an example of a living folk music tradition.History of the tune According to George Kimball, the second publication of the John Brown Song and the first including both music and text, with music arranged by C.S. Marsh, dated 1861. See George Kimball, “Origin of the John Brown Song”, New England Magazine, new series 1 (1890):371–376. “Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us”, the tune that eventually became associated with “John Brown’s Body” and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, was formed in the American camp meeting circuit of the late 18th century and 1800s These meetings were usually held in frontier areas, when people who lacked regular access to church services would gather together to worship before traveling preachers. These meetings were important social events, but developed a reputation for wildness in addition to wild religious fervor experienced by attendees. In that atmosphere, where hymns were taught and learned by rote and a spontaneous and improvisational element was prized, both tunes and words changed and adapted in true folk music fashion: Specialists in nineteenth-century American religious history describe camp meeting music as the creative product of participants who, when seized by the spirit of a particular sermon or prayer, would take lines from a preacher’s text as a point of departure for a short, simple melody. The melody was either borrowed from a preexisting tune or made up on the spot. The line would be sung repeatedly, changing slightly each time, and shaped gradually into a stanza that could be learned easily by others and memorized quickly. Early versions of “Say, Brothers” included variants, developed as part of this call-and-response hymn singing tradition The familiar “Glory, glory, hallelujah” chorus—a notable feature of the “John Brown Song”, the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, and many other texts that used this tune—developed out of the oral camp meeting tradition sometime between 1808 and the 1850s. Folk hymns like “Say, Brothers” circulated and evolved chiefly through oral tradition rather than through print.[8] In print, the camp meeting song can be traced back as early as 1806–1808, when it was published in camp meeting song collections in South Carolina, Virginia, and Massachusetts. The tune and variants of the “Say, brothers” hymn text were popular in southern camp meetings, with both African-American and white worshipers, throughout the early 1800s, spread predominantly through Methodist and Baptist camp meeting circuits.[10] As the southern camp meeting circuit died down in the mid 1800s, the “Say, brothers” tune was incorporated into hymn and tune books and it was via this route that the tune became well known in the mid 1800s throughout the northern U.S. By 1861, “groups as disparate as Baptists, Mormons, Millerites, the American Sunday School Union, and the Sons of Temperance all claimed ‘Say Brothers’ as their own.” For example, in 1858 words and the tune were published in The Union Harp and Revival Chorister, selected and arranged by Charles Dunbar, and published in Cincinnati. The book contains the words and music of a song “My Brother Will You Meet Me”, with the music but not the words of the “Glory Hallelujah” chorus; and the opening line “Say my brother will you meet me”. In December 1858 a Brooklyn Sunday school published a hymn called “Brothers, Will You Meet Us” with the words and music of the “Glory Hallelujah” chorus, and the opening line “Say, brothers will you meet us”. Some researchers have maintained that the tune’s roots go back to a “Negro folk song”,[13] an African-American wedding song from Georgia,[14] or to a British sea shanty that originated as a Swedish drinking song.[15] Anecdotes indicate that versions of “Say, Brothers” were sung as part of African American ring shouts;[16] appearance of the hymn in this call-and-response setting with singing, clapping, stomping, dancing, and extended ecstatic choruses may have given impetus to the development of the well known “Glory hallelujah” chorus. Given that the tune was developed in an oral tradition, it is impossible to say for certain which of these influences may have played a specific role in the creation of this tune, but it is certain that numerous folk influences from different cultures such as these were prominent in the musical culture of the camp meeting, and that such influences were freely combined in the music-making that took place in the revival movement.