Modern Renditions of Spirituals - Rhodes Case Study

From time to time, Rhodes Singers will do a neat trick in which, instead of singing something by Bach, Handel, or a random modern composer, our director will decide that we should sing a spiritual. Now normally, Memphis musical heritage aside, this represents a difficult thing for me and I imagine it does for many other members of the choir as well. How could we possibly identify with texts that were initially meant, if the vast majority of American choir directors can be believed, to be subversive to the institution of slavery. It’s a story you have likely heard before – “swing low sweet chariot coming to carry me home” as a prayer for deliverance. So on and so forth for every popular spiritual in circulation in the choral world. I’ve been in some sort of choir for most of my life; at first spirituals like this were a fun break, when I became a bit more aware they seemed more and more like appropriation.

Honestly they still do seem like appropriation – but the spiritual we’ve been singing this semester, “Wade in the Water” arranged by African American composer Rosephayne Powell, has struck me as particularly powerful by virtue of its subversion: “Wade in the water, wade in the water children, wade in the water, God’s gonna trouble the water.” The text has a resounding ring to it – our director claimed it was a reference to escaping slaves wading in creeks and rivers to throw pursuers off their trail. It spoke to me as the hard slog of activism. I thought of the struggle of African Americans to gain human rights under systematic slavery then segregation as walking against a strong current. When it takes effort to even hold on to the progress that has been made, taking a step forward and holding that new spot is even harder. Given what we have learned about the American investment in white superiority, this metaphor of wading against a harsh current is very potent.