spirituals - What He Said: The Words of Jesus Christ http://whathesaid.com Making the words of Jesus Christ easy to read and explore Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:36:28 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.2 Amazing Grace http://whathesaid.com/2010/02/08/amazing-grace/ http://whathesaid.com/2010/02/08/amazing-grace/#respond Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:36:28 +0000 https://whathesaid.com/?p=333 I always thought “Amazing Grace” was a nice, sort of generic, hear-it-all-the-time-never-really-pay-attention kind of song. Then it popped up in one of my guitar lessons. It’s a classic tune for learning your first hammer-ons and pull-offs. The music I’ve been playing from doesn’t list a composer, just the word “Spiritual” as a sub-head. And played […]

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]]> I always thought “Amazing Grace” was a nice, sort of generic, hear-it-all-the-time-never-really-pay-attention kind of song. Then it popped up in one of my guitar lessons. It’s a classic tune for learning your first hammer-ons and pull-offs. The music I’ve been playing from doesn’t list a composer, just the word “Spiritual” as a sub-head.

And played slowly, with feeling (and flub-free) it is a very spiritual song. I thought it was another spiritual like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” that came over with slaves from Africa. Not so. I learned today that the song was written by John Newton (1725-1807), an English sea captain responsible for transporting thousands of slaves from Africa to the New World.

During one fierce storm at sea, he had a religious awakening and converted to Evangelical Christianity. And then wrote “Amazing Grace,” among other hymns. I wonder if his tune was at all influenced by the music he heard rising up from the chains below decks on all those voyages.

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