Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child

As with most African-American Spirituals, little is known about the origins of Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child. It first became widely known to the general public when it was performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers in the 1870s, but its origins surely long predate that. The most usual rendering of the text is “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, A long ways from home. True believer. A long ways from home” with variations on subsequent verses (“Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone” etc.). The literal meaning of the text would seem to refer to the common, heart-breaking practice of breaking apart enslaved families, sending children off to plantations far away from their parents. Additional, more metaphorical meanings are also possible. However one interprets the text, the meaning of the musical melody itself is unmistakable: mournful, sorrowful, with only the slightest ray of hope coming with the “true believer” line, seeming to imply that belief in the ultimate mercy of God may one distant day bring relief. While many other Spirituals also have themes of hope or joy, and even carefully encoded instructions on how to escape slavery, Motherless Child, in both its text and musical content, seems to be fundamentally a song of lamentation and sorrow. For this bass clarinet ensemble version, I listened and read widely, seeking to understand the full context and meaning of the song. There is an enormous range of recorded versions by jazz singers, opera singers, choirs, and pop and rock singers. My arrangement was influenced by a combination of many versions, but draws most heavily on the direct, deeply soulful version sung by Odetta at her 1960 Carnegie Hall concert. (Odetta was one of the central musical figures of the civil rights movement, with a profound influence on artists from Harry Belafonte to Bob Dylan.)