Light One Candle by Peter Yarrow—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2025-26

 

                                                                       Light One Candle by Peter Yarrow performed by Peter, Paul & Mary.

For the Sixth night of Hanukkah, let’s hear one from a secular and leftist Jew like so many of my friends.  Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary wrote the song in 1982 as a pacifist response to the Lebanon War which was reflected in the lyrics: 

Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice justice and freedom demand, Light one candle for the wisdom to know when the peacemaker’s time is at hand. 

It also connected the Maccabean rebellion against the Seleucid Greek Empire from 140 to 63 BCE as a war of national liberation like contemporary struggles in the Third World. 

The first performance of the song was at a 1982 concert in Carnegie Hall and included in annual Holiday concerts after that.  It made its appearance on an album in 1986 on No Easy Walk to Freedom.  It was a highlight of PP&M’s 25th Anniversary Concert the same year.  It was also featured two decades later in reunion concerts broadcast on PBS.  Since the death of Mary Travers, Peter regularly performed it in solo programs until he died this past January 7. 

Light One Candle may be the most broadly popular of all more recent Hanukkah songs.

Light One Candle by Peter Yarrow—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2024-‘25

 

Light One Candle by Peter Yarrow performed by Peter, Paul & Mary on their 25th Anniversary PBS Concert. 

Word came from his family that Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary entered hospice care during his last Hanukkah.  

Let’s hear a Hanukkah song from the largely secular and leftist Jew like so many of my friends who wrote the song in 1982 as a pacifist response to the Lebanon War which was reflected in the lyrics: 

Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice justice and freedom demand, Light one candle for the wisdom to know when the peacemaker’s time is at hand.

It also connected the Maccabean rebellion against the Seleucid Greek Empire from 140 to 63 BCE as a war of national liberation like contemporary struggles in the Third World.

The first performance of the song was at a 1982 concert in Carnegie Hall and included in annual Holiday concerts after that.  It made its appearance on an album in 1986 on No Easy Walk to Freedom.  It was a highlight of PP&M’s 25th Anniversary concert the same year.  It was also featured two decades later in reunion concerts broadcast on PBS.  After the death of Mary Travers, Peter regularly performed it in solo programs.

This year it  may speak more clearly to many of us than ever.

Light One Candle may be the most broadly popular of all more recent Hanukkah songs.

Go Tell It On the Mountain—The Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2022-‘23

 

                                                       Go Tell it on the Mountain sung by the Blind Boys of Alabama.

Of all the announcement carols Go Tell It On the Mountain is unusual for a number of reasons.  It is not European but rooted in the American Black Community and dated to the era when the end of slavery flourished.  It is not an announcement by the Heavenly Hosts, but an instruction to a whole people to spread the good word.  And because of its connections to the Civil Rights Movement, it doubles as a Christmas Carol and a liberation anthem.

Watch Night when African-Americans gathered on New Year's Eve to greet the news of the Emancipation Proclamation.   Many Black churches continue to hold Watch Night services where Go Tell It On the Mountain is commonly sung.

It has been dated to 1865 and may reflect the widely celebrated moment when the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that abolished slavery went into effect or even earlier to the Watch Night celebrations on New Year’s Eve 1863 when Lincoln’s war-time Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.

 The Fisk Jubilee Singers, seen here in 1881, helped spread Go Tell It On the Mountain.

 Like earlier liberation spirituals from the slave era, it couched liberation in Biblical analogy.  The song spread through ante-bellum Black Churches and was widely popularized by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers who toured widely from the 1870’s.

Civil Rights dynamo and song leader Fannie Lou Hamer may have been the first, or one of the first, to change he lyrics  to "Let My People Go!"

During the Civil Rights Movement of the ‘50’s and ‘60’s activist/singer Fannie Lou Hamer and perhaps others borrowed the line to “Let my people go!” from the older spiritual Go Down Moses to substitute from the original line “That Jesus Christ is Born!”  Drawing on that inspiration Peter, Paul & Mary, who had been active themselves in Southern Civil Rights protests, recorded the song with the Exodus references in 1963 and it became a mid-level single hit for them in 1964.

Today Go Tell It On the Mountain is widely sung as a Christmas Carol in both Black and White churches and has been often recorded on holiday albums.  It is particularly popular with county music artists including Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks, and even Toby Keith.  On the other hand, the “Let My People” go versions remain popular with Black performers.  People who first hear one or the other are sometimes surprised or shocked to discover the different use.  In many Black churches, however, both versions are combined, especially on Watch Night.

The Blind Boys of Alabama.

Today, we will hear the song from The Blind Boys of Alabama, a Black gospel group founded in 1939 in Talladega, Alabama, and has featured a changing roster of musicians over its history, the most of whom are or were vision impaired. They have won five Grammy Awards and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. They were endowed with a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1994, were inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2003, and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2010.