GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

It's hard to find a good rendition of this carol. This is not the best, but men's groups are fun and this group is fairly decent. Harmony could be a little tighter, but they certainly have a lot of fun.

"Go Tell It on the Mountain" is an African-American spiritual dating back to at least 1865 that has been sung and recorded by many gospel and secular performers.

As is the case with most spirituals, its music and lyrics cannot be attributed to any one person. African American composer John Wesley Work is credited with formally adapting the song and including it in a songbook in 1907. But the versions of Go Tell it on the Mountain are as varied and distinctive as the people performing it. But it is always, at its heart, a song of joy. It was born in the oral culture of African slaves in the American south. It was embraced by the civil rights movement in the 1960's. Today it is a perennial favorite at Christmas concerts and church services across North America. The spiritual Go Tell It on the Mountain has come to mean many things depending on the time and place in which it is sung - freedom anthem, hymn of faith, a simple song of Christmas.

In 1963, Peter Yarrow, Noel "Paul" Stookey, and Mary Travers, along with their musical director, Milt Okun, adapted and rewrote Go Tell It on the Mountain as Tell It on the Mountain, their lyrics referring specifically to Exodus and employing the line "Let my people go," but implicitly referring to the Civil Rights struggle of the early '60s.

The song was recorded by Yarrow, Stookey and Travers on their Peter, Paul and Mary album In the Wind and was also a moderate hit single for them. Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer used this rewritten version of the song as an anthem during the mid-1960s.