Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air
I know I can count on you
Sometimes I feel like saying "Lord I just don't care"
But you've got the love I need To see me through
Sometimes it seems that the going is just too rough
And things go wrong no matter what I do
Now and then it seems that life is just too much
But you've got the love I need to see me through
When food is gone you are my daily need
When friends are gone I know my saviour's love is real
Your love is real
You got the love
- From You Got The Love – by Florence and The Machine
It was an essay that one of my Evening Class students wrote that tipped me off to this great spiritual, originally released by Candi Staton but recently covered by the mega popular Florence and The machine. It is a powerful Psalm-like song of struggle and prayer and belief. It fits with an ability in Negro Spirituals to mix emotions.
When James Cone suggested that “Black Music is unity music” he went on to describe that in two ways; the uniting of people of course but also the uniting of emotions. “It unites the joy and the sorrow, the love and the hate, the hope and the despair of black people; and it moves the people toward the direction of total liberation.” This mixing of joy and sorrow is described by Cornell West, “The gospel in Afro-America lauds Calvinistic calls to transform the world, yet shuns puritanical repression… Life is viewed as both a carnival to enjoy and a battlefield on which to fight.”
Florence, whether she is aware of it or not has brought the carnival and the battlefield onto one stage every time she blasts this one out.
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