Go Tell It On The Mountain

Travis Cottrell's recording keeps this African-American spiritual's structure intact — the same refrain framing three short verses that walk through the nativity account almost in sequence. "While shepherds kept their watching o'er silent flocks by night" opens directly onto Luke 2:8's account of shepherds "in the same country... keeping watch by night over their flock," the scene the spiritual spends its first verse setting up before the angel arrives.

"Rang out the angel chorus that hailed our Savior's birth" moves into Luke 2:11's announcement — "there is born to you, today... a Savior, who is Christ the Lord" — and the spiritual's instruction to "go tell it on the mountain" turns that private announcement into something meant to travel, the same movement from private news to public proclamation the shepherds themselves make a few verses later in the gospel account.