The Rhythm Divine

Spirituals are the sacred folk songs of the slavery era in America, the best-known being the African-American spirituals of the 19th century like 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot'. We'll hear versions of this much-loved song from Paul Robeson, Beyonce, Eric Clapton, The Fairfield Four, and Johnny Cash. And we'll discover the coded messages hidden in its lyrics.

Transcript

Driving through Uralla recently along the the New England highway up on the Northern Tablelands of NSW I passed Thunderbolt's Rock, a sizeable rock formation said to be the site where the bushranger Captain Thunderbolt used to ambush people. I stopped to have a look and there's not much there - a patch of gravel and an expanse of grazing land, an impressively large boulder with lots of nooks and crevices, and years of graffiti. But a strange thing happened - I had left my radio on and while I was contemplating the march of time, what should I hear playing but that old spiritual, 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot'. And it occurred to me that Captain Thunderbolt, who was shot and killed in 1870, and the song, were probably born around the same time in the mid-19th century, one in Australia, the other in the United States.

Well Captain Thunderbolt's memory lingers on but 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' has become one of the world's best-known and loved songs and tonight I thought we'd hear just a few of the hundreds of versions, from Paul Robeson, Eric Clapton, Beyonce, The Fairfield Four, and Johnny Cash. But to start, a medley of spirituals sung in the style of the jubilee singers who popularised the song onstage in the 1870s from The Belleville A Capella Choir.

From Virginia in the south of the United States, the Belleville A Capella Choir of the Church of God and Saints of Christ, an African-American denomination sing in the jubilee style of the late 19th century, European harmonies and trained vocals combining with syncopation and clapping. And a medley of spirituals including 'Steal Away', 'Down by the Riverside', 'Oh Them Golden Slippers', 'Great Camp Meeting in the Wilderness' and 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot'.

The camp meetings formed 200 years ago were large gatherings of people of all kinds - frontier pioneers, homesteaders, towns folk and slaves - part of the Protestant revivalism of the time, the Awakenings as they were known, that swept the United States, especially the Methodists, Baptists and Lutherans. The camp meetings were renowned for their ecstatic singing and it's here that the tradition of spirituals began - with Biblical texts being put to simple tunes easily sung by crowds with lots of call and response, handclapping and shouting out. The term itself, spiritual, comes from the phrase 'spiritual songs' mentioned in the New Testament. (Colossians 3:16, for example)

No one knows for certain the origins of 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot'. One story says it was composed by a slave by the name of Wallace Willis in 1840 who worked in the cotton plantations around Oklahoma City, but scholars think this is dubious, pointing out it was probably the end result of many versions sung over many years.

Since then it's been sung in churches, at pop concerts, at political rallies and of course in the sporting grandstands, most notably as the anthem of the English Rugby Union football team. But if there's one singer firmly linked to the song, it's the classically-trained baritone whose mother was a Quaker and whose own father was a runaway slave, Paul Robeson.

Robeson was the famous African-American athlete, singer, actor, and civil rights advocate, born in 1898, whose own father was a runaway slave before becoming a Presbyterian minister. Robeson was himself a man of religious intensity persecuted for his strong political stance against racism and fascism during his life and we'll hear more about him on the program in a few weeks.

Spirituals are the sacred folk songs of the slavery era in America, so you probably won't be surprised to learn that many of them were coded, with messages hidden in their lyrics, usually how to escape slavery. Two main kinds of coded spirituals were signal songs, telling about an event, and map songs like giving direction how to escape using the Underground Railroad. This was a network of people in the 19th century who helped runaway slaves escape from the south and head north.

'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' has lyrics taken from the Old Testament story of the prophet Elijah who was taken heavenward in a fiery chariot. The theme of salvation is pretty clear there. But in the slave's code, the chariot was also the Underground Railroad, swinging low meant being smuggled away, and crossing the river Jordan was to make it out of the South. The 'band of angels coming after me' was the group, or the person, also known as a conductor who would lead the slaves to freedom. The most famous of these being Harriet Tubman who personally rescued more than 300 slaves in the years leading up to the American Civil War.

Further Information

Africans in America
America's journey through slavery presented in four parts by PBS in the USA.

The Story of Spirituals in America

Music

CD title: Southern Journey, Vol 11 - Honor the Lamb
Track title: Medley of Spirituals (Great Camp Meeting in the Wilderness, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Steal Away, What Kind of Shoes You Gonna Wear, Oh Them Golden Slippers, I'm a Soldier in the Heavenly Choir, Down by the Riverside)
Artist: The Belleville A Capella Choir
CD details: Rounder Cd 1711
URL: http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/1144501/a/Southern+Journey+Vol+11:+Honor+The+Lamb.htm

CD title: The Collector's Paul Robeson
Track title: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Artist: Paul Robeson
CD details: Monitor Records MCD 61580
URL: http://www2.scc.rutgers.edu/njh/PaulRobeson/

CD title: There's One in Every Crowd
Track title: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Artist: Eric Clapton (with Yvonne Elliman and Marcy Levy, vcls)
Composer: trad. arrr. Clapton
CD details: R.S.O Records

CD title: The Fighting Temptations soundtrack
Track title: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Artist: Beyonce
Composer: trad. arr. Wayburn Dean and Keith Lancaster
CD details: Columbia 5139042000

CD title: The Fairfield Four and Friends: Live From Mountain Stage
Track title: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Artist: The Fairfield Four
Composer: trad.
CD details: Blue Plate Music BPM 402
URL: http://www.nea.gov/honors/heritage/fellows/fellow.php?id=1989_02

CD title: Hymns by Johnny Cash
Track title: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Artist: Johnny Cash
Composer: trad. arr. J. Cash
CD details: Columbia 5063722000

Presenter

Geoff Wood

Producer

Geoff Wood