Definition: A hidden message is information that is not immediately noticeable, and that must be discovered or uncovered and interpreted before it can be known.
Take a look at what some have said are hidden messages in today's music:
THIS IS NOT SOMETHING NEW!!!!
Let's take a look back to the 18th and 19th centuries at music that had hidden messages.
The Song: "Follow the Drinking Gourd"
The Setting: A time when slavery was common in the United States of America, that is Pre-Civil War era. Many slaves were trying to escape their captivity, but faced certain punishment or even death if they tried to escape.
View this video to gain an understanding of what slavery was like, the Underground Railroad and meet Harriet Tubman, an underground railroad conductor.
Our Song: "Follow the Drinking Gourd"
Click Here to Listen to the song.
When the sun comes back and the first quail calls,
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
For the old man is waiting for to carry you to freedom,
If you follow the Drinking Gourd.
The river bank makes a very good road,
The dead trees show you the way,
Left foot, peg foot, traveling on
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
The river ends between two hills,
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
There's another river on the other side,Follow the Drinking Gourd.
Where the great big river meets the little river,
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
For the old man is awaiting to carry you to freedom
if youfollow the Drinking Gourd.
Is there more to this song than what you see and hear?
For those who haven’t already worked out what ‘The Drinking Gourd’ is, it is a reference to ‘the big dipper’ a constellation very close to the North Star itself. The North Star can be very difficult to recognise, but ‘The Big Dipper’ is easily identifiable, looking like a massive drinking gourd, and a clear indication of a northerly direction.
The Drinking Gourd/The Big Dipper
The series of routes and safe houses, which were often run by Quakers, was known as ‘The Underground Railway’. This is the railway, which James Carr was singing about in his ‘Freedom Train’. By 1861 there were about 500 abolitionists, helping slaves find this invisible network of pathways, safe houses and signals. Probably the most courageous of these was known as ‘Peg Leg Joe’ who moved from one plantation to another teaching slaves the lyrics to ‘Drinking Gourd’ and helping them interpret it.
A full interpretation of the song was posted in the ‘Detroit News’ on Tuesday 25th. February 1997.
‘When the sun comes up and the first quail calls, follow the drinking gourd.
For the old man is a-waiting to carry you to freedom,
If you follow the drinking gourd.’
(With the beginning of winter on Dec. 21, the sun starts climbing higher in the sky each day. And in winter, the call of migratory quail echoes across southern fields. So Peg Leg Joe's ingenious song advised slaves to escape in winter and head north toward the Big Dipper -- code name, drinking gourd. A guide will be waiting at the end of the line. )
‘ The riverbank makes a very good road. The dead trees show you the way, Left foot, peg foot, travelling on Follow the drinking gourd. ‘
(This verse directs fugitives to the Tombigbee River, where special "Peg Leg" markings on fallen trees will show they're on the correct northerly course. Travelling under cover of darkness, slaves could find their way along a river even on nights too overcast for the Big Dipper's stars to shine through. The Tombigbee River, which empties into Alabama's Mobile Bay on the Gulf of Mexico, originates in northeast Mississippi. Perhaps as many as 200,000 enslaved people lived near that river, according to Gloria Rall, producer of a children's planetarium show, Following the Drinking Gourd, about the escape route. )
‘The river ends between two hills. Follow the drinking gourd. There's another river on the other side, Follow the drinking gourd. ‘
(When the Tombigbee ends, the runaways who'd memorized the song knew to walk north over a hill until they came to another river, the Tennessee, then go north on it as well. )
‘Where the great big river meets the little river, Follow the drinking gourd. For the old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom, If you follow the drinking gourd. ‘
(The song ends by instructing slaves that at the end of Tennessee River they must cross over to the north side of the big Ohio River, where someone from the Underground Railroad would ensure their passage to the first of a string of safe houses reaching all the way to Canada. )
Getting across
But how were slaves to ford the huge Ohio? Swimming across was all but impossible. Although boats on the Illinois side of the river did cross over to pick up riders, planetarium show producer Rall has noted, an escaped slave who waited long risked meeting up instead with a bounty hunter. The solution was to walk across the Ohio River when it was frozen. Because Underground Railroad engineers calculated that the trip from the Deep South to the Ohio normally took about a year, their "Drinking Gourd" song suggested beginning the journey north in winter in order to get to the Ohio by the next winter. Eliza Harris, the heroine of Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, was "modelled on a real woman who crossed the ice of the Ohio River in winter," Underground Railroad scholar Blockson explained in a National Geographic article. By the time Eliza reached the river, its ice was breaking up. "In desperation as her pursuers closed in, Eliza darted into the river, holding her child in her arms. Springing from one floe to another, she lost her shoes in the icy waters but struggled on with bleeding feet to the opposite shore and the safety of the Ohio underground," Blockson recalls. With her heart-stopping story of Eliza's flight to freedom, Stowe fuelled anti-slavery sentiment in the North and became, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "the little woman ... who wrote the book that made this great war."
So, what do you think? Is there a hidden message in this song? Was there a movement to help the slaves escape by using secret messages inside music? Please leave me your comments. Let me know what you think.
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