The Rev. Otis Moss III delivers his sermon “The Blue Note Gospel” Sunday in the Amphitheater.
“You can’t have the Gospel Shout without the Blues Moan,” said the Rev. Otis Moss III. He said at Chautauqua, “we get to practice what W.E.B. Du Bois called ‘the-yet-to-be United States of America.’ ” That yet-to-be United States includes the Gospel Shout and the Blues Moan.
Moss preached at the 10:45 a.m. Sunday morning ecumenical service of worship in the Amphitheater. His sermon title was “The Blue Note Gospel,” and the scripture reading was Ezra 3: 10-13.
Amber Coates-Johnson claps along as the Trinity Choir and the Chautauqua Choir sing during morning worship Sunday in the Amp.
In verses 12-13 the writer says, “But many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people should so loudly that the sound was heard far away.”
In the OM3 version, the version Moss used to preach from, verse 13 reads that the people “could not distinguish between the Gospel Shout and the Blues Moan.”
Moss heard about the Blue Note Gospel when he went to his first jazz concert — featuring Wynton Marsalis at Lincoln Center — with his sister Daphne. But it was in New Orleans, in Treme near Congo Square, where Creole, Indian, Spanish and African peoples gave birth to a cultural legacy.
“When they produced jazz, the people could not distinguish between a Gospel Shout and a Blues Moan. People who were ripped from the womb in Africa and nursed in the caldron of chattel slavery, could not distinguish the Gospel Shout from the Blues Moan,” he said.
There is a Blues Moan in African American song, speech, sermons, even food. “Gumbo is a sermon of resistance,” Moss said. “By God’s grace and women’s creativity they created gumbo out of scraps of meat, carrots, onions and other vegetables. Now people charge $20 a bowl for it.”
The Blues Moan is a way of being, a theology of life in a country where African people could build the country but not participate in it. “There is no Gospel Shout without a Blues Moan,” Moss said.
Musician T-Bone Walker wrote “Stormy Monday” about the Blues Moan and the Gospel Shout. “They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad / They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad / Wednesday’s worse, and Thursday’s also sad / Yes the eagle flies on Friday, and Saturday I go out to play / Eagle flies on Friday, and Saturday I go out to play / Sunday I go to church, then I kneel down and pray.”
Moss said, “There is no Gospel Shout without a Blues Moan.”
Cyrus the Great of Babylon allowed the Jewish exiles to go home. Early rulers tried to get the Israelites to forget their previous home, but they would not forget. “To have a future, people can’t ban their past. There is no Gospel Shout without a Blues Moan. The Blues keep us rooted in reality.”
Moss continued: “The elders of Israel refused to celebrate the building of the new temple. We have to know the past or we will repeat the mistakes of yesterday. But if we can’t face the Blues, we never get to the Gospel, we will be silent.”
There are people in the United States who want us to go back, he told the congregation. “What year do they want to go back to? 1954, 1917, 1851? I believe we want to go forward because the Blues Moan leads to the Gospel Shout.”
He told the congregation that we have to stop editing our testimony as people and as a country. Young people are shouting, he said, they want just to praise in worship. But Moss tells them there needs to be balance.
“While they are shouting, their grandma is weeping. Why? Because tears are a shout of pain. She has seen so many challenges and God has seen her through. We have to keep the Blues and the Gospel together.”
Moss told of a visit to an artist’s shop. On one wall were paintings for $60 and on another ones for $1,000. What is the difference, Moss asked. The artist said that God had told him to take a painting out into a storm and the rain beat on the painting creating new colors and lines that he could not create. “So on one wall are the ones I started but on the other wall as the one’s God finished.”
Moss said, “We have to step into our own storm. There is no Gospel without the Blues.”
Gospel music, he said, is played on Blues chords. He credited Thomas Dorsey with the beginnings of gospel in Chicago with Mahalia Jackson. Dorsey used the same Blues chords but changed the lyrics.
“So many people want to skip over Friday and go directly to the Gospel, but you can’t do that. There is no Gospel Shout without the Blues Moan. We have to merge the Blues with the Gospel,” Moss said.
He continued, “This is a nation that knows the Blues and joy, tragedy and triumph, hurt and healing. We understand the Blues. Zora Neale Hurston wrote, ‘I have been in sorrow’s kitchen and licked the pot clean.’ But there is joy on the other side. The Blues and the good news are part of who we are.”
As an example of bringing the pieces, the broken parts in this world, back together, he described the Japanese process of kintsugi. Using sap or urishi with some gold dust in it, the master potter puts the pieces together. The pottery then has greater value, not because of the gold or the sap, but because of the hands that brought it together.
“Kintsugi people are all broken. The one who brings us together lets us know that the Gospel Shout and the Blues Moan go together. We hold on to the hands of God to hang on to the totality of life,” Moss said.
He told the congregation, “We have to tell our children about the Blues and the Gospel, about the tragedy and the triumph and the pain and the possibilities and put them in the pot to make Gospel Gumbo. “
The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, senior pastor of Chautauqua Institution, presided. Amy Gardner, senior vice president and chief advancement officer of Chautauqua Institution, read the scripture. The Trinity Choir, under the direction of Bryan T. Johnson, executive director of sacred music at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, sang “This Little Light of Mine,” for the choral introit. Trinity Choir was accompanied by Mike Flowers on piano, Wayne Barrett on bass guitar and Mike Flowers, Jr. on the drums. The first anthem was “Every Praise,” by John David Bratton and Hezekiah Walker, with the Trinity Choir and the Chautauqua Choir singing together. The second anthem was “Mighty Good God,” sung by the Trinity Choir under the direction of Johnson and accompanied by the trio of Flowers, Barrett and Flowers. Hattie Tucker was the soloist. The offertory anthem, sung by both choirs under the direction of Johnson and accompanied by the trio, was “Total Praise” by Richard Smallwood. Angelia Parker provided the soprano high notes. After the blessing and dismissal, the Trinity Choir sang “I Need You to Survive,” under direction of Johnson and accompanied by the trio. The postlude, played by Rees Taylor Roberts, 2024 organ scholar, was “Toccato,” (sic) from Suite for Organ by Florence Price. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching is provided by the Gladys R. Brasted and Adair Brasted Gould Memorial Chaplaincy and the Daney-Holden Chaplaincy Fund.
