James  Weldon Johnson

GOD'S  TROMBONES

      
New York. Penguin Classics.  2008. 96 pages. Paperback:

       
ISBN-10: 0143105418 

Reviewed by Patrick Killough
(1) biblio.com  10/15/2010

Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes. * * * * *

review:

In 1927 James Weldon Johnson published GOD'S TROMBONES - SEVEN NEGRO SERMONS IN VERSE. As Johnson said in the book's famous Preface, these sermons are meant to honor the American Negro folk sermon and the trombone-like voices of the great preachers who created, preserved, advanced and immortalized the sermons.

Some scholars call this genre "the song sermon." Many agree that the song sermon is one of the very greatest contributions of American Negro Culture.  *** Some excerpts from the unnumbered seven sermons: "THE CREATION":

"And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely --I'll make me a world."

And from "THE PRODIGAL SON":

"Young man --
Young man --
Your arm's too short to box with God."

Also justly praised are the black and white drawings by Negro artist Aaron Douglas. His Prodigal Son wastes his substance in what looks like a Harlem "jook" or night spot. Douglas's Joseph of Arimathea is as black as the poet Johnson portrays him: in "THE CRUCIFIXION":

"Up Golgotha's rugged road
I see my Jesus go.
I see him sink beneath the load,
I see my drooping Jesus sink.
And then they laid hold on Simon,
Black Simon, yes, black Simon;
They put the cross on SImon,
And Simon bore the cross."

A grand, very short little book. It inspired a short movie starring James Earl Jones. It makes for prayerful, meditative reading.     -OOO-

http://www.biblio.com/books/210134990.html
=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=


(2) lunch.com 10/16/2010

name of review: "Young man --/ Young man --/ Your arm's too short to box with God."

rating: * * * * *

review:
"Young man --
Young man --
Your arm's too short to to box with God."    

Those words begin "The Prodigal Son," the third of seven short sermons in James Weldon Johnson's little collection of 1927, GOD'S TROMBONES. The poet goes on to say that "A certain man had two sons." And the man "is God Almighty." And the two sons?

" ... ev'ry young man,
Ev'rywhere,
Is one of these two sons."  

Each sermon is preceded by a black and white drawing by famed Harlem artist Aaron Douglas. The Prodigal Son is shown by Douglas as a black man dancing with two black women in a place much like a Harlem "jook" or hot, sinful jazz night spot. Above his head a trombone is playing.

In his Preface, poet James Weldon Johnson says of the old time Negro preacher:

"he brought into play the full gamut of his wonderful voice, a voice ... rather that of a trombone, the instrument possessing above all others the power to express the wide and varied range of emotions encompassed by the human voice -- and with greater amplitude."

God's trombones are playing in the most unlikely places, even Harlem night spots, Aaron Douglas's drawing suggests. And resonating, too, even in the ears of unlikely sinners such as the Prodigal Son.

Each of the seven sermonettes, along with the Prayer that precedes them all, should, I think, be read aloud, slowly, meditatively and prayerfully. Subjects of the other six sermons are The Creation, Go Down Death -- A Funeral Sermon, Noah Built the Ark, The Crucifixion, Let My People Go and The Judgment Day.

Very powerful is Aaron Douglas's illustration for The Crucifixion. In it "black" Simon of Cyrene is carrying fallen Jesus's cross to Golgatha. Without the help of a black man, the Savior would never have made it to Calvary. And then where would our salvation have been? In the words of James Weldon Johnson:

"And then they laid hold on Simon,
Black SImon, yes, black Simon;
They put the cross on Simon,
And Simon bore the cross."

Amen.  

-OOO-
=-=-=-=-

See also the related Killough comment  below on the brief review at lunch.com by writer Christy Tillery French of Powell, Tennessee:

Dear christytilleryfrench, Your dad sounds like my kind of Sunday School teacher. GOD'S TROMBONES, of course, is in praise of the old time black preacher of James Weldon Jones's youth.

The evolution of that form of Negro "song sermon" preaching, emphasizing rhythm, dancing, singing and more is well presented in Chapter Eight, one of the 14 essays of the very recent THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE REVISITED. The song sermon is what happened when a West African griot (singer of the glories of a clan, a prince or a village) was captured, brought to America, learned English, became converted to Protestant Christianity and then put his West African skills to work retelling Bible stories in the language of King James' texts.

Thanks for flagging this indeed wonderful, very short, book.

Cordially, qigongbear/Patrick K

http://www.lunch.com/Reviews/book/God_s_Trombones
_Seven_Negro_Sermons_in_Verse-1532436.html
=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=

(3) bn.com   10/16/10

title of review: "Listen! -- Listen!/ All you sons of Pharaoh"

rating:  * * * * *

review:

Here are the concluding words of "Let My People Go," from James Weldon Johnson's 1927 collection, GOD'S TROMBONES - SEVEN NEGRO SERMONS IN VERSE:

"Listen! -- Listen!
All you sons of Pharaoh.
Who do you think can hold God's people
When the Lord God himself has said,
Let my people go?"

Preceding "Let My People Go" is a black and white drawing by Harlem artist Aaron Douglas. It shows a black Moses praying while God overwhelms Pharaoh's pursuing army in the waves of the Red Sea.

When West African griots, tribal story tellers, were captured, shipped to North America, enslaved, became Christian converts through the words of King James's Bible, they reinvented themselves as the first Negro preachers and creators of the black Protestant "Song Sermon."

Author James Weldon Johnson strove to recreate the spoken aspects of sermons he had heard in his youth by great American black preachers. Very well done, too, this little book. Very prayerful. -OOO-

recommended reading:

-- Jeffrey Ogbar, ed. THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE REVISITED

-- Mark Connelly, THE GREEN PASTURES - A FABLE


http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Gods-Trombones/
James-Weldon-Johnson/e/9780143105411/?itm=
2&USRI=god%27s+trombones
=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=

(4) amazon.com  10/16/10

title of review: The literary and historical context of GOD'S TROMBONES

rating: * * * * *

review:

I have recently read GOD'S TROMBONES for the first time. I did so because I had read not long before, thanks to the Amazon.com VINE program, a much more recent collection of scholarly essays. That collection is called THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE REVISITED. It is edited by Professor Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar of the University of Connecticut.

Over and over I read Essay (Chapter) Number Eight by McKinley Melton, a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts. Its title: "Speak It Into Existence: James Weldon Johnson's GOD'S TROMBONES and the Power of Self-Definition in the New Negro Harlem Renaissance" (pp. 109 - 126). That essay persuaded me to read Johnson for myself. I am glad I did.

According to Melton, a key goal of the very self-conscious New Negro Harlem Renaissance (NNHR) was to "let the Negro speak for himself" (p.109). But New Negro writers could not just parrot Henry Ford's dictum that "history is bunk." Black writers could not, that is, turn their backs on black history and start "writing black" from scratch. But how do this without repeating the stereotype of black folks as either figures of fun or profoundly to be pitied for their sufferings?

In 1927 James Weldon Johnson found a key example of Negro creative, assimilative culture for himself to investigate and to glorify: the old-time negro American Protestant preacher and his "song sermons."

Imagine a West African "griot" (teller of folk tales and folk histories). He is captured, shipped to America, sold into slavery. His master exposes him to Christian teaching and history. The Americanized griot is converted to Protestant Christianity and then retells the ancient stories of Israel as he heard them in the King James English translation.

The result is the Negro American song sermon -- "a new art form" drawing on West African "rhythm, melody, chant, mime, and dramatic impersonation" (p. 110). The black Protestant song sermon is a high Negro cultural contribution to America and the world.

In the seven sermons and a prayer of GOD'S TROMBONES James Weldon Johnson, using standard English rather than dialect," tries, successfully in my opinion, to capture elements of Negro preaching rhetoric and theater. All done meditatively, prayerfully, and briefly.

Take, for instance, the final sermon, "The Judgment Day." Time is finally up for the people of earth. Earth will be destroyed by fire. God summons Gabriel and tells him to trumpet the end time into existence.

"And the wicked like lumps of lead will start to fall,
Headlong for seven days and nights they'll fall,
Plumb into the big, black, red-hot mouth of hell,
Belching out fire and brimstone.
And their cries like howling, yelping dogs,
Will go up with the fire and smoke from hell,
But God will stop his ears.

Too late, sinner! Too late!
Good-bye, sinner! In hell!
Beyond the reach of the love of God."

Take this little book and eat it up. Amen!

-OOO-

tags: black protestant song sermon, black christianity, the black american preacher


http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Trombones-Sermons-Penguin
-Classics/dp/0143105418/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=
1287155391&sr=8-1
=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=

(5) epinions.com  10/16/2010

Review Title: "And God ... said: I'm lonely -- I'll make me a world."

Product Rating: * * * * *

PROS: Powerful, rhetorical, rhythmic English. Old Bible stories retold. Prayerful. Meditative. Unforgettable drawings by Aaron Douglas.

CONS: Seven sermons are about twenty too few. Our appetite for an   anthropomorphic  God is unsated.

BOTTOM LINE:  GOD'S TROMBONES is a portable volume of Bible stories retold in exalted black American spiritual idiom. Read them. Meditate on them. Regret that there are only seven verse sermons.

aohcapablanca's Full Review:

If you care to, you are free to argue whether or not the Harlem Renaissance (1919 - 1935) produced both GOD'S TROMBONES and its black and white illustrations. James Weldon Johnson (1871 - 1938) wrote the poems. Harlem artist Aaron Douglas (1899 - 197) sketched the hypermodern drawings.

GOD'S TROMBONES is accurately subtitled SEVEN NEGRO SERMONS IN VERSE. Some individual sermons are shorter than many epinions.com book reviews. Not to mention, in addition, being meaty, uplifting, meditative and hard to forget. 

Here are a couple of GOD'S TROMBONES' best known quotations :

-- (1) from "The Creation":

"And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely --
I'll make me a world."

-- (2) from "The Prodigal Son":

"Young man --
Young man --
Your arm's too short to box with God."

Then there are Aaron Douglas's memorable black-and-white drawings preceding each chapter, e.g.,:

-- (1) "The Prodigal Son" shows a young black man dancing with two black women in a Harlem "jook" or night club. Above his head two trombones ("God's Trombones?") are jazzing away.

-- (2) "The Crucifixion" portrays "Black Simon, yes black Simon" (of Cyrene in today's Libya) carrying towards Calvary the cross that "my precious Jesus" was too weak to bear. If a black man had not carried the cross of Jesus, and Jesus not been nailed on it to die, would mankind have been saved?

-- (3) "Go Down Death - A Funeral Sermon" shows Death riding at God's command "on his fastest horse" to Savannah, Georgia and the bedside of dying faithful black woman Sister Caroline.

"She saw Old Death. She saw Old Death
Coming like a falling star.
But Death didn't frighten Sister Caroline;
He looked at her like a welcome friend.
And she whispered to us: I'm going home,
And she smiled and closed her eyes."

In his often quoted Preface to GOD'S TROMBONES, poet, lawyer and American diplomat James Weldon Johnson identified the old-time Protestant Negro preacher as a major bearer and preserver of black American culture. Preachers whom Johnson recalled from his youth, and especially one heard not long before, late at night in Kansas City, had wonderful voices, voices "not of an organ or a trumpet, but rather of a trombone, the instrument possessing above all others the power to express the wide and varied range of emotions encompassed by the human voice -- and with greater amplitude."

* * *                          

For whatever reason, my thoughts have moved much of late back and forth between the 1927 of GOD'S TROMBONES and the 2008 American Presidential Elections. Much was heard in 2008 of black Senator Barack Obama's long time Chicago pastor, Reverend Doctor Jeremiah Alvesta Wright, Jr. (b. 1941). Dr Wright, in his younger days, had, inter alia, been first a U. S. Marine and later a Navy cardiopulmonary technician. As President Barack Obama had written years earlier, it was largely through the powerful, traditional "Negro Song Sermons" of Dr Wright that young Barack became a believing Christian.

I do not know if either President Obama or Reverend Wright has read GOD'S TROMBONES. But it would surprise me greatly if they had not. The President found faith in his Savior in a black Chicago church through the medium of a black preaching tradition reaching back to West Africa. Traditional village story tellers, griots, were captured, brought to America and sold as slaves. Later, as Christian converts, the former African tellers of tales became retellers of Bible stories. The rhythms and rhetoric of Africa then met King James's sonorous English translations and became in time a major black American pathway to God.

James Weldon Johnson and illustrator Aaron Douglas pay explicit homage in GOD'S TRUMPETS to the black Protestant American preacher. His impact lives powerfully among us in late 2010.

-OOO-


Recommended: yes.

http://www99.epinions.com/review/God_s_Trombones_Seven_Negro_Sermons
_in_Verse_epi/content_528014544516

=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=













http://www.lunch.com/Reviews/book/God_s_Trombones_Seven_Negro_Sermons
_in_Verse-1532436.html