Welcome to our thirteenth preparedness update.All previous updates can be found at https://nehbprepare.blogspot.com

Useful info and links at the bottom of the page

If there is anything that the Rally and Brigade can do for you, to help with your preparation - please ask.

NB: Of all the musical essays I've written for this year, this one's my favorite piece of research.

Important News:

Big Congratulations to our Judging Quartet Rooftop Records, taking Fourth Place with a stunning 90.7 score, in one of the highest scoring Internationals in history.

Volunteers for running the Rally are always needed, at check in time, during riser setup and tear-down, and other important tasks. Please volunteer to anyone, especially our President.

After attendance at 2 consecutive NEHB rallies, and with the passing of an audition, you can become a Member of NEHB. Membership is free, provided you attend at least one rally every 2 years. Members are guaranteed early admission, and can vote on important measures that affect the future of the rally.

Speaking of which - MEMBERS: please consider if you have any formal motions to make for consideration at the Members meeting at this year's rally. Any member can introduce a motion, as long as sufficient notice is given. Please allow any Board Member to help you formulate and submit a motion. Passed-motions are legally binding on the Board. Non-members can always ask a member to make the motion, but you will not be allowed to attend the member meeting to speak for it.

Reminders:

The 2020 Rally will be one week earlier in the calendar than in previous years - to accommodate the Jewish holidays. If your calendar-system always blocks the 3rd weekend, remember to shift it to the 2nd weekend for 2020. We will revert to the 3rd weekend for 2021.

Additional part learning tracks are available for your personal use only. $20 per part, contact our Treasurer to purchase.

Attend and host run-throughs - please attend or host. We are now on songs 1-12. To schedule a run-through, email Rob Sheridan. You can access the calendar on the web, add it to your own online calendar or find it on the NEHB web site.

Ride The Chariot

Traditional Gospel number

Arrangement owned by the Barbershop Harmony Society, possibly by Earl Moon

One of the ways that barbershop signals its debt to its African American roots, is when it sings a great traditional gospel song with respect and admiration. The style of music we sing would not exist had it not been created and elevated by the African American community.

The chariot is a symbol frequently used in both the New and Old Testaments. As a real object they transported important figures and were used as early cavalry weapons. As figurative symbols they carried those who represented God - either prophets or angels. In the arts, the chariot symbolizes a journey of great importance, or an endeavor of value.

In the American Spiritual oral tradition, it was both a reference to rising up to heaven in joy, and a subtle reference to the Underground Railroad that might spirit one away to freedom. In either case, it was an end to suffering and the beginning of a new or better life. Frederick Douglass (himself a former slave) once wrote:

“I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw or heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.”

Sterling Allen Brown, who interviewed many former slaves, wrote this in 1953:

“Ex-slaves, of course, inform us differently. The spirituals speak up strongly for freedom not only from sin (dear as that freedom was to the true believer) but from physical bondage.”

The American Gullah/Geechee culture of the Carolinas is proudly reclaiming and teaching their contribution to these musical traditions, which they trace back to Africa. Many of the songs we now call “Traditional Spirituals” or “Traditional Jubilee Songs” (Including Swing Low Sweet Chariot) were first sung for the public by the Jubilee Singers from the Historically Black College Fisk University - founded to educate freed Black Americans immediately following the US Civil War. Many such colleges produced traveling choruses to hold concerts, and the profits were used for scholarships.

Most arrangements of Ride The Chariot owe themselves to William Henry Smith, who arranged it for TTBB while he was a professor at the historically black Wiley College in Texas, back in 1939. (Mr. Smith is credited in the original copyright). It is frequently sung both at UVA by their Glee Club, and by many a cappella groups at Yale.

While this song is simple, and the arrangement is modern barbershop, let’s sing this to honor our barbershop roots, and roots deeper than our own.

VIDEO LINKS

Tema Youth Choir (Ghana)

Breath of Life Quartet (Spirituals)

Yale Whiffenpoofs