Delroy Willis - Come By Here

Topic: Theology
During the American Civil War, northern missionaries went to the Beaufort, South Carolina, area to work with slaves abandoned on plantations by owners who fled Union troops who had seized Port Royal Sound in November, 1861. Many were struck with parallels between the history of Jews and the current situation.

One of the first men to visit abandoned plantations in early 1862 said he read "read passages of Scripture" to slaves on Lady Island, including "the 61st chapter of Isaiah, verses 1-4." [1] The first verse was:

"The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;" [2]

Later that year, the Unitarian minister who was commanding African-American troops on Saint Helena island thought of his situation as comparable to that of Abraham when he wrote of himself as "Dwelling in tents, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." [3]

The Emancipation Proclamation was read on January 1 of the next year. Another missionary remembered, he "read to the church full the account of the escape of the Children of Israel from Egyptian bondage. I was amazed at the impression it seemed to make. The remarks the old men made were graphic and eloquent." [4]

Margaret Washington noted many scholars came to believe "African-American slaves saw themselves primarily in the same light as the Children of Israel." However, she discovered when she looked at the primary sources, the Gullah-speaking ones in coastal South Carolina were more inclined to identify with Christ’s suffering. [5]

Old Testament references to Jews escaping bondage appeared in other places where slaves from Africa were introduced to the Bible by missionaries from Europe and the United States. In Jamaica in 1860, while Abraham Lincoln was campaigning for president, a great revival spread across the island. It began in the fall among Moravians in the west, and quickly spread to Methodists and Baptists. As it moved east, it absorbed existing Afro-Jamaican religious practices, and created a new merger of African, Afro-Jamaican, and Christian rites. [6]

Robert Stewart noted the result was both an "increase in the number of independent native congregations" and the centralization of authority among the Baptists. [7] Today, the third largest religious group on the island is the Baptists. [8] Claiming larger numbers are Warner’s Church of God, which sent its first missionary in 1907, [9] and Seventh-day Adventists, who arrived in 1894. [10]

Independent churches continued to develop wherever a man or woman could attract enough followers. Lascellas Russell claimed on Facebook to have eight Valley Christian Ministries churches, mostly in central Jamaica. He said his direction came from Isaiah 58:6-12 and that "God been doing awesome and wondrous things through his servant, by healing the sick, sending deliverance to the captives that are bound and oppressed." [11]

One of his pastors was Delroy Willis. He had been raised in Trenchtown, [12] and recorded Reggae songs that were covered by better known artists. He had a conversion experience in 1973, changed to sacred music, retired around 1984, and returned to music in 2002. [13]

The Braeton pastor recorded a version of "Come by Here" in 2010 that used Father instead of Lord. At the end, he made the Old Testament reference more explicit, when he appealed to Father Abraham, Father Jacob, and Father peace man to come.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: Delroy Willis
Vocal Group: male group
Vocal Director: none identified

Instrumental Accompaniment: synthesizer, electric guitar most obvious

Rhythm Accompaniment: drums, rattle

Credits
None given

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English

Pronunciation: not much of an accent. Willis sang "somebody crying" rather than "somebody’s crying."

Vocabulary
Pronoun: somebody
Term for Deity: Father

Special Terms: I could not understand a few words, which probably were local.

Basic Form: prelude-denouement

Prelude: used the common verses (come by here, praying, crying) and the AAAB line repetition form with slight variations in each line. The A lines followed the statement-refrain pattern.

Denouement: five verses. The second verse had three unique lines followed by the "come, come Father" refrain. They itemized the reasons people needed Him to come: they were social, rather than personal.

The third verse used incremental repetition, the fourth repeated the very first "come by here" verse, and the last was simply "come, come." They all used the statement-refrain format.

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Hightowers 1-5
Tempo: up beat

Basic Structure: two sections divided by an instrumental interlude

Singing Style: used vibrato, especially on the word "here" in the last lines of the verses. Sometimes dropped words in repetitions.

Solo-Group Dynamics: Willis sang the statements and the male group sang the "come by here" refrain, using parallel harmony. The exception was the third verse (crying), in which the group hummed rather than sang.

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: Willis used motifs borrowed from Reggae. An interviewer said he used "hardcore reggae/dancehall rhythms as a mean of sanitizing the music of Jamaica, which, seem to him, to be growing ever more ‘murky’ because of its propagation of negative themes. He thinks the blending of the genre with religious themes and lyrics will assist in moving Jamaica forward positively, under god." [14]

Notes on Performers
Willis has since renamed his church the Good News Assemblies and expanded its programs to include providing meals and other social services. [15] In March 2015, he held a mass baptism on Sugarman’s Beach. "Before the baptism, there was a praise and worship segment with special entertainment coming from a group known as the Good News Singers, who performed several popular gospel songs." [16]

Availability
Album: Early Beginnings. Three Miles Music Family. October, 2010.

End Notes
1. E. L. Pierce. "The Negroes at Port Royal." Report to Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, 3 February 1862. Boston: R. F. Wallcutt, 1862. 11.

2. King James translation. Italics in original.

3. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Army Life in a Black Regiment. Boston: Fields, Osgood, and Company, 1870. 19, diary entry for 4 December 1862.

He was thinking of Hebrews 11:9: "By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:" (King James translation)

4. Edwin S. Williams. Letter to S. S. Jocelyn, 28 January 1863. Quoted by Margaret Washington Creel. "A Peculiar People." New York: New York University Press, 1988. 263.

5. Washington Creel. 263. She attributed this to the use of Jewish imagery during the Denmark Vesey controversy of the 1820s.

6. Robert J. Stewart. Religion and Society in Post-emancipation Jamaica. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1992. 145-147.

7. Stewart. 148.
8. Wikipedia. "Protestantism in Jamaica."
9. Mary R. Olson. "The Early Years." Society of the Church of God in Jamaica website.
10. Diane J. Austin-Broos. Jamaica Genesis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. 55.

11. "About Bishop Lascelles Russell Crusade." Facbook. His mission statement also used Saint Matthew 28:18-20.

12. Trenchtown was a 1930s public housing project located outside Kingston on the east side of the island. It became famous as the center of Reggae and its precursors. (Wikipedia. "Trenchtown.")

13. Baldwin Howe. "Pastor Delroy ‘Zion’ Willis Puts A‘stur’ in Caribbean Gospel Music." Reggae Times website. 30 May 2008.

14. Howe.

15. Ruddy Mathison. "Good News spreads the Word." Jamaica Gleaner website. 30 May 2015.

16. Rasbert Turner. "Big Baptism at Beach." The Jamaica Star Online. 2 March 2015.