Youtube Gallery

Call Number : CMSI-241

 

Sr. John Fisher sings a song she learned as a young girl

Note : Sr. John Fisher, SABS sings a devotional song that she learned at about the age of seven, in the 1940s. The song has a sentimental value to Sr. Fisher who currently works as a missionary in Tanzania. The sister told me that she sings this song during her private adoration of the blessed sacrament. The reference to the song came during our conversation, when we met after many years, at Kalamassery in Kerala. Our acquaintance goes back to my seminary days at Dharmaram College, Bangalore. Sister Fisher participated in our recording of Christmas songs in Malayalam for broadcast on All India Radio, Bangalore, in 1975. Sr. Fisher was working as a Registered Nurse at that time at St. Johns Medical College Hospital, not very far from Dharmaram College. We do not know the names of the composer of the text or the melody. It is possible that that the author wrote the lyrics according to a popular song from the movies in Malayalam or Tamil. Such practices existed in Kerala until the 1960s. See many examples in http://christianmusicologicalsocietyo... The reference to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the second strophe is an indication that the composer of the text lived after the time when the Spanish missionaries introduced the devotion to the Sacred Heart, in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. It so happened that we made this recording at a CMI Provincial House chapel that is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Joseph J. Palackal
New York
1 November 2018