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"We Shall Overcome" is a protest song that became a key anthem of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. It is widely speculated that the title and structure of the song are derived from an early gospel song, "I'll Overcome Someday", by African-American composer Charles Albert Tindley (1851–1933). However, although there are lyrical similarities, the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic and lyrical structures of Tindley's hymn are radically different from that of "We Shall Overcome". In addition, there is no mention whatsoever of Rev. Tindley or his composition in either the 1960 and 1963 copyrights of "We Shall Overcome". The song "We Will Overcome" was published in the September 1948 issue of ''People's Songs Bulletin'' (a publication of People's Songs, an organization of which Pete Seeger was the director and guiding spirit). It appeared in the bulletin as a contribution of and with an introduction by Zilphia Horton, then music director of the Highlander Folk School of Monteagle, Tennessee, an adult education school that trained union organizers. In it, she wrote that she had learned the song from members of the CIO Food and Tobacco Workers Union: "It was first sung in Charleston, S.C. ... Its strong emotional appeal and simple dignity never fails to hit people. It sort of stops them cold silent."〔"281. We Will Overcome." People's Songs, September 1948, p. 8〕 It was her favorite song and she taught it to countless others, including Pete Seeger,〔''Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Musical Autobiography'' by Pete Seeger, 1993–1997, p. 34〕 who included it in his repertoire, as did many other activist singers, such as Frank Hamilton and Joe Glazer, who recorded it in 1950. According to the late Pete Seeger, the song is thought to have become associated with the Civil Rights Movement from 1959, when Guy Carawan stepped in as song leader at Highlander, which was then focused on nonviolent civil rights activism. Seeger states the song quickly became the movement's unofficial anthem. Pete Seeger and other famous folksingers in the early 1960s, such as Joan Baez, sang the song at rallies, folk festivals, and concerts in the North and helped make it widely known. Since its rise to prominence, the song, and songs based on it, have been used in a variety of protests worldwide. ==Origins as gospel, folk, and labor song== In a 2006 interview with Beliefnet.com interviewer, Wendy Schuman; Pete Seeger responded to the following question regarding the origin of "We Shall Overcome":
Newly discovered research strongly suggests that the original source of We Shall Overcome was a gospel hymn entitled "If My Jesus Wills", composed sometime between 1932 and 1942 and copyrighted in 1954 by an African American Baptist choir director named Louise Shropshire. The book, ''We Shall Overcome: Sacred Song on the Devil's Tongue'', written by, Isaias Gamboa (music producer), reveals evidence of Louise Shropshire's authorship. In addition, the book reveals Shropshire's role as a close friend, civil rights ally and spiritual confidant of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. Lyrics to Louise Shropshire's, "If My Jesus Wills" (copyright 1954):
Lyrics to "We Shall Overcome" (copyright 1960):
Guy Carawan, who introduced "We Shall Overcome" to several student groups, wrote in 2010 that "the old words were ... I'll Overcome someday, I'll be all right / I'll wear the cross, I'll Wear the Crown / I'll be like him, I'll Sing My Song Someday". Zilphia Horton gave the original lyrics as "We will overcome, we will overcome someday. Oh, down in my heart, I do believe, we'll overcome someday. Subsequent verses, added by students at the Highlander School, began, "The Lord will see us through" and "On to victory". Louise Shropshire's hymn, "If My Jesus Wills", features the additional verses, "Gonna get my crown someday" and "Gonna sing a new song someday", in addition to "I do believe". These lyrics are noted by both Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan as having been from the "original". In a 2012 video interview, after carefully analyzing Louise Shropshire's, If My Jesus Wills, Pete Seeger concluded: "It's very probable" that Louise Shropshire's "If my Jesus Wills" was the hymn that Lucille Simmons had taught to Zilphia Horton, who taught it to him. Seeger also concluded that Louise Shropshire "should be added to the "(Shall Overcome )" story"〔Dunaway, David King, Beer, Molly; "Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals" (2010) Oxford University Press / p. 142〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Library of Congress LCCN Permalink for 2012560833 )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=We Shall Overcome: Sacred Song on the Devil's Tongue: The Story of the most Influential song of the 20th Century, how it became "We Shall Overcome" ... Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – died penniless.: Isaias Gamboa, JoAnne Henry PhD: 9780615475288: Amazon.com: Books )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Isaias Gamboa Explains Who Wrote "We Shall Overcome" | Vibe )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=CaribPress » Costa Rican author, Isaias Gamboa, pens controversial book )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=New Book Reveals the Untold History of Iconic Civil Rights Anthem 'We Shall Overcome' )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Streaming Audio Player | www.wsbradio.com )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Raça Brasil – Um cruzado no século 21 – Como um guerreiro do tempo das Cruzadas, um afrocostarriquenho vestiu-se com a armadura da fé na justiça divina para enfrentar os poderosos que enriqueceram à custa de uma canção religiosa, segundo ele, "roubada" pelo mercado pop )〕 Speculation that Rev. Charles Albert Tindley's "I'll Overcome Someday" may have been the direct inspiration for "We Shall Overcome" has been widely dismissed by scholars as Tindley's song bears virtually no recognizable musical resemblance to "We Shall Overcome"; having been written in a radically different time signature and pentatonic scale. Although there are lyrical similarities, the lyric rhyme scheme to "I'll Overcome Someday" is also radically different from that of "We Shall Overcome". Following an extensive forensic analysis of the two songs, renowned Ethnomusicologist Dr. Portia Maultsby concluded that "It is perhaps the lyrics that hold the key to the creation of 'We Shall Overcome'," adding: "the lyric rhyme scheme of "If my Jesus Wills" and "We Shall Overcome" are identical and the lyric patterns of the songs are similar. In addition, it is possible to superimpose convincingly the "We Shall Overcome" melody in diminution over the first eight measures of the harmonic progression of "If my Jesus Wills".〔"We shall overcome : Sacred Song on the Devil's Tongue" / Isaias Gamboa p. 284; edited by JoAnne F. Henry, Ph.D. and Audrey Owen. Amapola Publishers, Beverly Hills, California 2012 / US Library of Congress Catalog number: 2012560833/ Call Number: ML3918.P67 G36 2012〕 In 2012, while looking to secure usage rights to "We Shall Overcome" for the film ''The Butler'', directed by Lee Daniels and starring Academy Award winners Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Robin Williams, Terrence Howard, Jane Fonda, and Cuba Gooding Jr., film producer, Simone Sheffield discovered Isaias Gamboa (music producer)'s book, ''We Shall Overcome; Sacred Song on the Devil's Tongue''. Upon reading that Pete Seeger and the other popularizers of the freedom song were not (and, in fact, did not claim to be) the original authors of "We Shall Overcome", Sheffield contacted Gamboa, who then contacted Robert Anthony Goins Shropshire, the grandson of Louise Shropshire. Sheffield then commissioned a musicological report and involved the NAACP in the effort to seek recognition for Louise Shropshire's role in the history and creation of "We Shall Overcome". On September 11, 2013, following review and analysis of evidence, testimony and documentation, the Cincinnati, Ohio City Council unanimously passed a symbolic resolution affirming Louise Shropshire's "If My Jesus Wills" as the source from which "We Shall Overcome" was derived. On October 2, 2014, Louise Shropshire was inducted into the Ohio Civil Rights Hall of Fame for her contributions to the African American Civil Rights Movement as original author of We Shall Overcome, as well as her close association and support of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Inductees in Ohio civil-rights hall of fame urge continued work for equality | The Columbus Dispatch )〕 "I'll Overcome Someday" was a hymn or gospel music composition by the Reverend Charles Albert Tindley of Philadelphia that appeared together with seven other songs in a hymnal published in 1901.〔It is reproduced on the entry for Charles Albert Tindley on the website of the (Taylor House Museum ) in Berlin, Maryland, the town of his birth.〕 A noted minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Tindley was the author of forty-five influential gospel hymns, of which "We'll Understand It By and By" and "Stand By Me" are among the best known. The published text bore the epigraph, "Ye shall overcome if ye faint not", derived from Galatians 6:9: "And let us not be weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." It read:
Tindley's songs were written in an idiom rooted in African American folk traditions, using pentatonic intervals, with ample space allowed for improvised interpolation, the addition of "blue" thirds and sevenths, and frequently featuring short refrains in which the congregation could join.〔The pentatonic scale most favored in African-American spiritual and folk songs is composed of major seconds and a minor third. Of the 45 songs in Tindley's catalog, fifteen (approximately one third), use the diatonic scale; fourteen (nearly a third) use a pentatonic scale; and the remaining seventeen use different varieties of gapped (essentially also pentatonic) scales: ten have the seventh tone omitted; six, the fourth tone omitted; and one uses a four tone scale. See Horace Clarence Boyer, "Charles Albert Tindley: Progenitor of Black-American Gospel Music", ''The Black Perspective in Music'' 11: No. 2 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 103–132.〕 Tindley's importance, however, was primarily as a lyricist and poet whose words spoke directly to the feelings of his audiences, many of whom had been freed from slavery only thirty-six years before he first published his songs, and who were often impoverished, illiterate, and newly arrived in the North.〔Tindley was a composer for whom the lyrics constituted its major element; while the melody and were handled with care, these elements were regarded as subservient to the text." (Boyer, (), p. 113.)〕 "Even today," wrote musicologist Horace Boyer in 1983, "ministers quote his texts in the midst of their sermons as if they were poems, as indeed they are."〔Boyer (1983), p. 113.〕 After its first success, the popularity of "I'll Overcome Someday" waned for a time in the gospel world. However, a letter printed on the front page of the February 1909 ''United Mine Workers Journal'' states that "Last year at a strike, we opened every meeting with a prayer, and singing that good old song, 'We Will Overcome'." 〔Pete Seeger, 2006 interview with (Amy Goodman ) (September 9, 2006) states that a "professor from Pennsylvania" sent him this information in 2004.〕 Whether this refers to Tindley's 1902 gospel song cannot be determined, since the lyrics and tune have not come down to us. The mention is significant, however, since this is the first mention of a song with this title being sung in a secular context and mixed race setting.〔The United Mine Workers was racially integrated from its founding was notable for having a large black presence, particularly in Alabama and West Virginia. The Alabama branch, whose membership was three quarters black, in particular, met with fierce, racially based resistance during a strike in 1908 and was crushed. See Daniel Letwin, "Interracial Unionism, Gender, and "Social Equality in the Alabama Coalfields, 1878–1908", ''The Journal of Southern History'' LXI: 3 (August 1955): 519–554.〕 It is also (if the quotation is accurate) the first instance of the use of the first person plural pronoun "we" of a movement song instead of the singular "I" usual in the gospel and spiritual tradition.〔Seeger speculates that, "it's probably a late 19th century union version of what was a well-known gospel song, "I'll overcome, I'll overcome, I'll overcome some day". This is a hypothesis on Seeger's part, unless Tindley's composition was, as is entirely possible, a re-working from folk or even labor movement sources.〕 It seems reasonable to suppose that this more militant version, or its memory, persisted underground in the labor movement during the 1920s to re-emerge during its revival of the 1930s and 1940s. Outside of the labor movement Tindley's hymn was simplified, and performances began to resemble another folk-based spiritual, "I'll Be All Right", of which many versions exist.〔Reverend Gary Davis, who was originally from the North Carolina Piedmont region, sings a version of "I'll Be All Right" with the phrase "Deep in my heart, I do believe" sung to the familiar ''We Shall Overcome'' tune, recorded in 1960. However, Davis, a New York City resident since the late 1940s, and an important figure in the 1950s and 1960s folk revival, had by then undoubtedly heard the familiar modern civil rights anthem.〕 Tindley's original refrain, "If in my heart, I do not yield", was simplified to "Deep in my heart, I do believe", and additional improvised verses were added. According to David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace, by 1945 the words and the tune had come together in a song still called by Tindley's title, "I'll Overcome Some Day", with additional words by Atron Twigg and a revised musical arrangement by Chicago composer, arranger, and publisher Kenneth Morris. Legendary gospel singer, pianist, and composer Roberta Martin, also based in Chicago, composed another version of "I'll Overcome", the last 12 bars of which are the same as the current version of 'We Shall Overcome.'"〔''The People's Almanac'', (New York: Doubleday, 1975).〕 Thus by the end of 1945 several versions of "I Will () Overcome" were current as a gospel song, while on the South Carolina picket line, Lucille Simmons, Delphine Brown, and other striking tobacco workers were singing a slow version of the song as ''We Will Overcome''. Based on the Johns Island, South Carolina version of the song, "I Will Overcome," which "began with a slow rhythmic pulse (sometimes referred to as short meter), then increas() in tempo to a 'shout,'" the protest song utilized by Simmons and Brown was well-suited to the picket line since it produced the effect of "gradually building in intensity as more voices joined the chorus." Although many scholars reject the theory, Tindley's "I'll Overcome Someday" thus is held by some historians to provide the structure for "We Shall Overcome", with, according to them, both text and melody having undergone a process of alteration. They believe the tune has been changed so that it now echoes the opening and closing melody of the powerfully resonant 19th-century "No More Auction Block For Me",〔James Fuld, tentatively attributes the change to the version by Antron Twigg and Kenneth Morris. See James J. Fuld, ''The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk'' (noted by Wallace and Wallechinsky)1966; New York: Dover, 1995). According to Alan Lomax's ''The Folk Songs of North America'', "No More Auction Block For Me" originated in Canada and was sung by former slaves who fled there after Britain abolished slavery in 1833.〕 also known from its refrain as "Many Thousands Gone".〔Eileen Southern, ''The Music of Black Americans: A History'', Second Edition (Norton, 1971): 546–47, 159–60.〕 This was number 35 in Thomas Wentworth Higginson's collection of Negro Spirituals that appeared in the ''Atlantic Monthly'' of June 1867, with a comment by Higginson reflecting on how such songs were composed (i.e., whether the work of a single author or through what used to be called "communal composition"):
Bob Dylan has said that he used this very same melodic motif from "No More Auction Block" for his composition "Blowin' in the Wind."〔From the sleeve notes to Bob Dylan's "Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3" – "... it was Pete Seeger who first identified Dylan's adaptation of the melody of this song (More Auction Block" ) for the composition of "Blowin in the Wind". Indeed, Dylan himself was to admit the debt in 1978, when he told journalist Marc Rowland: "Blowin' in the Wind" has always been a spiritual. I took it off a song called "No More Auction Block" — that's a spiritual, and "Blowin in the Wind sorta follows the same feeling ..."〕 Thus similarities of melodic and rhythmic patterns imparted cultural and emotional resonance ("the same feeling") to three different, and historically very significant songs. The note progression of the tune has a discernible resemblance to the famous lay Catholic hymn "O Sanctissima" (also known as "The Sicilian Mariners Hymn") collected (or composed) in Italy by Johann Gottfried Herder in the late 18th century.〔No one has ever found published versions of the tune in Italy, though a version antedating Herder's by a few years was published in London. In any case, whether he composed or collected it, Herder had based his song on the Italian folk tradition.〕 Arguably an even closer resemblance is to "Caro Mio Ben" attributed to Neapolitan composer Giuseppe Giordani; this is also a late 18th century Italian song and was a staple of 19th century voice teachers. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「We Shall Overcome」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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