Listening to the song “Oh Mary Don’t you Weep” it was a song
of joy and hope. The voice of Mississippi John Hurt and his guitar add this
effect of joy. But then listening to the lyrics it told a different story. Such
words like “Pharaoh’s” and “Lord told Moses” made me do more research about the
song. Doing research on the lyrics, I found out that it contains events of the
old and New Testament, such as the biblical story of Mary of Bethany and her
please to Jesus to resuscitate her brother Lazarus. This song originates before
the American Civil War and to scholars on is consider it to be a “slave song”
and contains “coded messages of hope and resistance”. As I listen to the song again it made me wonder how it was
at the start of slavery when ships, filled with slaves, where transported to
the New World to be sold. My charcoal drawing illustrates a women weeping for
her lost one, weeping inside the stowage where the slaves where put. I have never seen death so for that
reason I did not draw the face of the death, only their feet. But I also try to
represent “hope” by giving the women some light coming from above as to say
that there is still a light of hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment