Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" is an African-American spiritual song and one of the best-known Christian hymns. Originating in early African-American musical traditions, the song was probably composed in the late 1860s by Wallace Willis and his daughter Minerva Willis, both Choctaw freedmen. Performances by the Hampton Singers and the Fisk Jubilee Singers brought the song to the attention of wider audiences in the late 19th century. The earliest known recording of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" was recorded in 1894 by the Standard Quartette.
The song uses the theme of death to remind the audience of the glory that awaits in Heaven, when Christians believe they will transcend the earthly world of suffering and come to rest in their final home. Specifically, the text refers to the Old Testament account of the Prophet Elijah's ascent into Heaven by chariot. The stylistic elements and thematic content are highly typical to those of other spirituals. The song is characterized by its use of repetition as a key poetic element, powerful imagery, personal rhetoric, and potentially coded lyrics. "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" was traditionally performed as a call-and response tune. Its free-form structure intentionally allows for improvisation and spur-of-the-moment changes made to bring the performers and audience to a state of ecstasy and connection with the Holy Spirit. The melody is pentatonic.
In 2002, the US Library of Congress honored the song as one of 50 recordings chosen that year to be added to the National Recording Registry. It was also included in the list of Songs of the Century, by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.
History
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" was composed by Wallace Willis and Minerva Willis, Choctaw freedmen in the old Indian Territory in what is now Choctaw County, near the County seat of Hugo, Oklahoma, sometime after 1865. He may have been inspired by the sight of the Red River, by which he was toiling, which reminded him of the Jordan River and of the Prophet Elijah being taken to heaven by a chariot. Some sources claim that this song and "Steal Away" had lyrics that referred to the Underground Railroad, the freedom movement that helped black people escape from Southern slavery to the North and Canada.Alexander Reid, a minister at the Old Spencer Academy, a Choctaw boarding school, heard Willis singing these two songs and transcribed the words and melodies. He sent the music to the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. The Jubilee Singers popularized the songs during a tour of the United States and Europe.
In 1939, Nazi Germany's Reich Music Examination Office added the song to a listing of "undesired and harmful" musical works.
The song enjoyed a resurgence during the 1960s Civil Rights struggle and the folk revival; it was performed by a number of artists. Perhaps the most famous performance during this period was that by Joan Baez during the legendary 1969 Woodstock festival.
Oklahoma State Senator Judy Eason McIntyre from Tulsa proposed a bill nominating "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" as the Oklahoma State official gospel song in 2011. The bill was co-sponsored by the Oklahoma State Black Congressional Caucus. Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed the bill into law on May 5, 2011, at a ceremony at the Oklahoma Cowboy Hall of Fame; making the song the official Oklahoma State Gospel Song.
Lyrics
Refrain:
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home.
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home.
I looked over Jordan, and what did I see,
Coming for to carry me home.
I saw a band of angels coming after me,
Coming for to carry me home.
If you get back to heaven before I do,
Coming for to carry me home.
You'll tell all your friends I'll be coming there too,
Coming for to carry me home.
As is typical of folk songs, there is no standardized set of lyrics. The version by the Fisk Jubilee Singers takes the following structure:
Refrain:
Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home
Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home
I'm sometimes up, I'm sometimes down
Coming for to carry me home
But still my soul feels heavenly bound
Coming for to carry me home
I looked over Jordan and what did I see?
Coming for to carry me home
A band of angels coming after me
Coming for to carry me home
Content and style
The content of the song is typical to the style of the spiritual in several ways: its use of imagery that provides a sense of immediacy to the historical and biblical past, the repetition of the key poetic element of the song, and the alteration between the refrain and the stanzas throughout. The song alternates between first person and second person pronouns, stressing the relationship between the performer, the listener, and the events unfolding in the song. By directly calling to the listener in the second stanza the audience is transformed into a creative device that serves to heighten the emotional urgency of the tune.The song was originally intended to be sung in a call-and-response, a format that draws from the heritage of African styles of music and is widely used in African-American churches today. A leader sings the differentiated lines, and the congregation replies “Coming for to carry me home” after each. This style of performing the spiritual can be heard in the existing recordings of the Fisk Jubilee Singers performing the tune. This call-and-response performance style is the most common form of spiritual.
The simple, repetitive nature of the song, along with the fact that it was commonly performed without instrumental accompaniment, meant that spontaneous shifts in tempo, pitch, and emphasis were commonly made, leading the song in new and exciting directions intended to unify congregants with the Holy Spirit.
Like other spirituals, “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” has been thought to contain coded meanings not immediately apparent to all listeners. American historian Charshee Charlotte Lawrence McIntyre argues that many spirituals make use of “metonymic devices,” or metaphors that have encoded meanings. She claims that throughout many traditional spirituals several recurring figures always carry a metonymic double meaning. These double meanings allowed enslaved people to safely communicate messages of hope, freedom, and specific plans for escape to one another under the watchful gaze of their captors. The double meanings encoded in “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” are believed to be the Jordan River as representative of the first step to freedom from slavery, “home” as Africa, and Jesus as anyone who helps bring the enslaved to freedom. However, a definitive categorization of any such figures is impossible to make.
Film, video games, and television appearances
The song has frequently been used in films and television.- 1931: Dirigible – sung by Clarence Muse
- 1936: Dimples – hummed by the Hall Johnson Choir
- 1936: The Lonely Trail – sung by a choir
- 1938: Everybody Sing – swing version sung by Judy Garland in blackface at an audition, with special lyrics.
- 1938: Room Service – sung by the Marx Brothers
- 1943: Dixie – sung by Bing Crosby and a chorus
- 1944: The Adventures of Mark Twain - sung by Fredric March playing Samuel Clemens
- 1948: A Date with Judy
- 1950: Young Man with a Horn – sung by a chorus
- 1961: The Alvin Show – sung during one of the show's musical segments
- 1970: Woodstock - sung by Joan Baez at the 1969 Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York.
- 1971: The Hard Ride – sung by Bill Medley
- 1974: Blazing Saddles – briefly sung by Lyle, albeit in a mocking tone, while working on the railroad
- 1976: The Shaggy D.A. – sung by a dog in the dog pound
- 1980: The Muppet Show— sung by Dizzy Gillespie
- 1982: Honkytonk Man
- 1983: National Lampoon's Vacation – sung by Clark Griswold
- 1984: Revenge of the Nerds - played on a record player before being quickly stopped by Lamar.
- 1993: Addams Family Values – sung by Gomez Addams on his deathbed
- 1993: Mister Rogers' Neighborhood Episode 1993 – sung by François Clemmons
- 1997: Con Air – sung by Nathan 'Diamond Dog' Jones
- 2001: Futurama in season 3, episode 3 - sung by Bender
- 2003: The Fighting Temptations - Performed by Beyoncé
- 2003: The Saddest Music in the World - sung by Maria de Medeiros
- 2004: Jersey Girl
- 2007: The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night - sung by Sparx
- 2008: iCarly - sung by Spencer Shay
- 2009: Scrubs in season 8, episode 7 - sung by Elliot Reid
- 2012: Brickleberry in season 1, episode 5 - sung by Steve Williams
- 2014: Freedom – Performed by The St. Olaf Choir and Marvis Martin
- 2016: The Birth of a Nation
- 2016: The Amazing World of Gumball Episode: "The Origins"
- 2019: The X Factor: Celebrity – performed by group Try Star on the second live show
- 2024: ''Bonhoeffer''
Renditions
Since then, numerous versions have been recorded; including those by Nellie Melba, Bing Crosby, Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen, Louis Armstrong, Sam Cooke, Vince Hill, Peggy Lee, and Paul Robeson. In 1951, Dizzy Gillespie replaced the chariot with a Cadillac; first a Fleetwood and later, as on the 1967 album Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac, an Eldorado.