Amusing and shocking that, on the O Brother Where art Thou soundtrack, he and his co-writer (J. Lowell) of the original version of “Angel Band” were not given credit for their composition. The author is listed as ‘traditional’.

Has this composed, historically significant and intellectually-pleasing music that is the ‘root’ of today’s sacred music in our American ‘melting-pot’ been relegated to ‘traditional’? And, more importantly, has our consciousness so shifted that we really believe that these old ‘reform hymns’ and ‘gospel songs’ are true folk music, and no longer the intellectual and precisely composed pieces that they were intended to be? And when we claim that the true meaning of folk music is that it was created and shaped by its purely country and oral heritage, how can we legitimately claim that “Angel Band” has anything to do with roots music. For goodness sake, the composer went to study composition with the master of sacred music in the new world, and then went to England and Germany to further advance his education.

Clearly, the song ‘Angel Band’ is not about one style or another, about syncretism or the melting-pot of this country’s musical history. It is about death, resurrection, and about God. There is something that made that intellectual, written-down tune and words accessible to several generations of Americans who adopted it as their own, regardless of style. And in 1955, the Stanley Brothers recorded this song they’d learned in church or from their mum, cited it as ‘traditional’ and on down the line, on the O Brother soundtrack, this intellectual song has become part of the mechanism that is bringing ‘roots’ music back into the limelight of popular culture.

Sources:

1)An article by the Christian History Institute at: http://chi.gospelcom.net/GLIMPSEF/Glimpses/glmps025.shtml

2)The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2004.Columbia University Press. Quoted at: http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/Biographies/Images/Image347.gif

3) The Cyber Hymnal at: http://www.cyberhymnal.org/bio/m/a/s/mason_l.htm
An article by Vicky Boyd, 1996, on HymnSys, the Multimedia Hymnal System at: http://www.hymnsys.com/bradbury.htm