To D or not to D: that is the question...

So, while working on "Deep River" I am concurrently working on "Lord, I Want to Be a Christian In My Heart," and after working out the pentatonic stuff I went on and transposed it from G flat to D like I planned to ...

But then, what happened was, it started raining last night and I began hearing different ideas to go with the journey in the story...

Like "Deep River," "Lord, I Want to Be a Christian in My Heart" is the story of a journey, but a spiritual journey fraught with danger in a world in which, like yet another Negro Spiritual says, "Ev'rybody talkin' 'bout Heaven ain't goin' there." Several of my enslaved ancestors must have pondered the journey very deeply to produce "Lord, I Want to Be a Christian In My Heart."

So, as the story goes from considering the facts as is given in the text and in the history of the United States, one has to consider an enslaved man or woman deciding, in the freedom of his or her soul, to become a Christian -- a real one, to the heart. This distinction was necessary to make, because all around the enslaved were the people who dared to treat them as mere beasts of burden, many of whom went to the finest churches in the land on Sunday morning and returned Sunday afternoon to brutalizing, raping, and working those they dared to own to death.

Therefore, it was necessary for the Christian in chains to press forward in his or her spiritual understanding ... a Christian "in the heart" would have to be different. Then the Spirit of God led him or her to further realizations: a true Christian would be holy -- not practicing all the sins that go with oppression -- and loving, which throws out the possibility of oppression, period.

But there was still the question of HOW people claiming to be Christians could be so thoroughly EVIL. The answer lay in the story of Judas Iscariot, the disciple of Christ who fooled everyone around him but Christ, Who knew that Judas was a thief and would betray Him to those Who wished to murder Him. "I DON'T want to be like Judas in my heart"... it was necessary for the Christian in chains to establish this BEFORE discovering the answer: "Lord, I want to be like JESUS in my heart." There the journey reaches its victorious end

The thing is, the Judas part requires some serious contrast, and in a pentatonic environment, one can't just go from D major to D minor. The natural major/minor pairing is between the major key and its relative minor, which would be D major/B minor ... but B minor is a little too low for baritone to be beautiful once the melody is transposed down there. BUT, if the melody is left in G flat, the keyboard harmony can go down to E flat minor and even further down to C flat/B minor -- DOUBLE MINORS for the verse about Judas. So...

My name is Deeann, but I guess I will have to be Gflateeann on this one... not quite done with it, but the contrasting changes are in place.