Hymn tune history: CWM RHONDDA (with co-blogger Pam McAllister)
Here's the second installment in my hymn history co-blog with author and activist, Pam McAllister. Pam and I are exploring the background of each of the hymns on my new recording, Makes the Heart to Sing: Jazz Hymns.This week we're looking at the album's opening track- and the second of two Welsh tunes on the recording- CWM RHONDDA, the tune used for the text, "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah." This tune is also familiar to many as the setting for the inspiring Social Gospel hymn with “God of Grace and God of Glory,” text by Harry Emerson Fosdick. Pam blogged about that Social Gospel hymn HERE in 2016.PAM ON THE HYMN TEXTThe redundantly named William Williams (1717-1781) understood his life to be a journey, not unlike the one taken by the ancient Israelites wandering through a barren wilderness. Walking over ninety-five thousand miles, all of Wales became his parish.Williams had intended to study medicine until he heard a fiery sermon by the twenty-something sensation Howell Harris. Inspired, Williams became a preacher too, although he wanted nothing of lifeless indoor religion; instead, he chose the open road, preaching in the rain, snow, and sun.It was a hard life. Once, a mob beat him to within an inch of his life, but Williams continued to walk and preach, becoming a central figure in the great Methodist revival in Wales. Nicknamed “the sweet singer,” he wrote over eight hundred hymn lyrics as he wandered.The imagery of “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” the only text by Williams found in most modern English-language hymnals, was inspired by Exodus and the story of the Israelites, led out of Egypt by God who appeared as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Williams wrote, “Let the fire and cloudy pillar lead me all my journey through.”We, too, long for a God who journeys with us through the bewildering landscape of our modern lives. Like little kids strapped into the back seat, we’re inclined to cry out, “Are we there yet?” We, too, know mobs. Sometimes they parade through our streets or across our TV screens, threatened and threatening, enlivened by the careless bullying, racist, sexist rhetoric of those in power. More often, we face down disapproving co-workers or grumbling relatives. We, too, search for manna, sustenance, significance. We want our lives to matter. Guide us, O God, we pray, and keep us singing along the way.
DEANNA ON THE HYMN TUNE “CWM RHONDDA”

TO GO DEEPER:Sheet music for Deanna’s arrangement of CWM RHONDDA at deannajazz.comPam's website, AskHerAboutHymnHistory of the hymn, by Gabriel Edwards, on Discipleship Ministries UMC websiteWords and Music, “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” at Hymnary.org(by looking at this, you can compare how I changed the harmony in my trio version!)Video of scene from John Ford’s “How Green Was My Valley” -CWM RHONDDA sung in Welsh!Extensive history on CWM RHONDDA and its composer, John Hughes at the Treorchy Male Choir website