While slavery might seem like a term from a bygone era, the truth is there are more than 27 million victims of it worldwide in the forms of labor/debt bondage, forced laborers and sex and drug trafficking.
And utilizing classic hymns with a new-school feel, Carl Thomas Gladstone is trying to bring the issue back to the forefront of people’s minds.
Gladstone is a Deacon of the United Methodist Church and the director of the Young Leaders Initiative, a United Methodist ministry focused on youth and young adults in the heart of Detroit.
And in his free time he showcases his skills as a perceptive musician with an innate desire to reclaim old songs and find contemporary meaning in them.
The nationally distributed artist says his music explores the deepest human experiences and they “expose moments when the divine seems distant, and ultimately (it) revels in the moments when hope and love seem close at hand.”
His latest undertaking, The Abolitionist Hymnal, strives to take his personal experiences and newfangled understanding of the modern day slave trade to bring a sense of awareness to the Christian community.
“The abolitionists of the 19th century were fighting laws on books that said slavery was okay, which brought it to the surface a little bit,” Gladstone said. “Nowadays it is very underground and so how would Christian congregations claim the identity of abolitionists today with that reality? We don’t even associate with people who might work in the slave trade.”
Gladstone admits that he was as ignorant as anybody about the facts of modern slavery, such as somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 children in America are victims of sex trafficking each year according to a recent study by the University of Michigan Law School, but once he started to educate himself he couldn’t pull himself away from the gruesome realities.
The movie Human Trafficking starring Mira Sorvino caught his eye on TV one day, and soon after he picked up the book Not For Sale by David Batstone.
“That book does an amazing job of laying out the three kind of main ways that people are still enslaved today. But he writes the book so all of the stories he tells are of people who are enslaved, but he also tells the story the other way — from the perspective of people who by the end of the book will come rescue them from slavery,” Gladstone said. “It’s a very tragic book because it details how people are enslaved, but it also explains how to fight it today.”
After visiting the National Underground Railroad Center in Cincinnati he knew he had to help bring some insight on that fight to his fellow brothers and sisters.
“There’s this moment where you’re standing on the northern bank of the river (at the museum) —and you know when they sang ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’, ‘ a band of angels to carry me home’ — the tour guide stops and says ‘This is where they are talking about.’ People would come over to this side of the river and a band of angels would come and take them to a safe house, and it all just became very real at that moment.”
So real that Gladstone has officially kicked off his Abolitionist Hymnal project and the wheels are turning faster than ever. In order to fund his vision he was hoping to raise $3,000 by March 14, and he had already hit $3,050 from 23 supporters by Feb. 9.Donating to the project also has benefits for those investing their money.
Every person who donates at least $5 will have his/her name included on the album’s cover art, and gifts up to $100 will include gifts such as buttons, hymnal chord charts and lead sheets of the music and advance copies of the album.
Pledges of $100 or more will qualify a group or person who pledges as the “Church of God Waking” and that community can claim their place as one of the stops on The Abolitionist Hymnal debut concert tour and even have Gladstone come to a church or home to teach the songs.
There are plenty of ways to donate to the cause via www.carlthomasgladstone.com.
As for the music itself, most of it is from the 1800s and Gladstone has tried to create a collection that can still speak to people today.
He said it is been easy to find abolitionist hymns thanks to a lot of online text repositories, but the fun part has been creating modern day melodies that make the music even more accessible.
The first matter of business will be releasing acoustic versions of the songs on his Web site in a few months, but in the next year Gladstone plans on creating a re-mix album of abolitionist hymns involving a plethora of melodies and sounds.
He has already lined up the Lake Louise Camp Choir to record a song and he has friends who play everything from “electronica to a more hippie kind of rock” who he’s hoping will contribute.
He even has a connection with Caedmon’s Call front man and solo star Derek Webb, a nice asset to have in his back pocket as things move forward.
Gladstone said other than creating suitable melodies, he is trying to find songs that require little editing of the original texts in order to whip up a little euphonic charm.
“There are definitely choices to be made and some editing to do,” he said. “In some of the old hymnals there is a lot of choice language about the evils of the Southern United States…stuff about the devil is from Georgia and people being sold down the river and stuff like that. So I just kind of tried to work around some of that, but I try to be fairly true to the text.”
Some of the changes he has made help relate the music to the current horrors of brothels and child labor.
Gladstone said his goal is to engage faith communities and open up the discussion so they can be aware and aid in the dismantling of slavery around the globe
“There’s all these stories of (Dr. Sirirat) Pusurinkham going into rescue orphans in brothels in Thailand and saving them by her own will, that kind of thing — and while I might not be doing that I can help raise awareness in Christian congregations, like it happened in the 19th century,” he said. “I think we need to reclaim our identity as abolitionists and if this is a helpful tool in doing that, I’m eager to do it.”
Check it out, with a video HERE
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