Morning Song – Build On That Shore

You can hear it first in the echoey reverb of Pops Staples’ guitar, then in Mavis’ resonant alto, followed quickly by the spine-tingling harmonies of her siblings: The Staple Singers aren’t singing “Build On That Shore” as a pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die, escaping-the-troubles-of-this-world song.

They’re singing it as a a song where there is no clear boundary between this world and the next, where the building of the holy city on that far distant shore is both continuation of and inspiration to build it “on earth as it is in heaven”.