Black spirituals are true folk songs that were passed down by word of mouth over many years, with various versions being developed, before they were eventually written down. The texts reflect this variety, as there’s no one “official” version. The arrangement I’m using as a reference for the spiritual “Wade in de Water” has stripped-down lyrics, so that’s what I’m using as the for this commentary. Even with the limited text used, though, there’s still a lot to say! (Betcha you couldn’t have guessed that one.) Bear in mind that a lot of commentary on any type of folk song is at least partly supposition and hypothesizing, as we don’t have access to the authors. We don’t even know their names.
Let’s start with the title and repeated line: “wade in de water.” What “water” are we talking about? Well, it’s complicated. Here are some of the meanings:
1. If the meaning is taken from the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament, then it’s probably a reference to the Israelites’ crossing of the Jordan River into the Promised Land. (More Jordan River imagery will show up later.) Here’s the relevant verse:
It shall come about when the soles of the feet of the priests who carry the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan will be cut off. (Joshua 3:12a KJV)
So the Jordan River wasn’t parted for them to cross until the priests’ feet touched the water. They had to go ahead and act in faith, trusting that their feet would end up on dry ground as they took that first step.
2. If the meaning is taken from the Christian New Testament, then we have to add in the following phrase, “God’s gonna trouble the water.” These words seem to echo the following passage from the Gospel of John, describing a scene at the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem where a number of sick and disabled people are lying around it:
For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. (John 5:4 King James Version; this verse is not included in most modern translations.)
So, using that reference, the meaning of the line would be something like, “Trust in God, do what He says, and you’ll be healed/saved/delivered.” The people at the pool weren’t healed just by lying there; they had to get up and get into the water. (The story goes on to tell about the healing of a man who’s been there waiting for thirty-eight years. When Jesus asks him if he wants to be healed, the man says that he has no one to help him into the water when it is stirred. So Jesus says, “Rise, take up thy bed and walk.” That part of the story isn’t referenced in the spiritual.) The idea that God will “trouble” the water therefore isn’t a threat of coming judgment or disaster but a promise that there will be a way to get out of their difficulties.
If you’d like to read more about the scriptural origins of Black spirituals, you can read an earlier post: “How Did We Get the Spirituals?”
3. But—spirituals almost always have a double meaning, that is, a spiritual and an earthly one. So there’s also an idea that getting off the land and into the water could have been an instruction to runaway slaves who were being shepherded by Harriet Tubman on the Underground Railway. If Tubman in her role as the leader and scout for the group saw that there were patrols out with bloodhounds, then she’d start singing the song as a warning for them take to a nearby stream and confuse their scent. But since whites were used to hearing black slaves sing, they wouldn’t think it was odd for her to be singing as she walked along a trail.
Well, I must hasten on to the next set of water images, these specifically having to do with the Jordan River:
Well, de River Jordan is so chilly an’ cold,
Chills de body but not de soul.
If you get there before I do,
Tell my friends I’m a comin’ too.
There are at least three extra-biblical meanings for “River Jordan”:
1. A reference to the “Middle Passage,” the voyage that slave ships took across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa. Those who had been captured and enslaved refused to let their souls be cast down even as their bodies were in chains.
2. A reference to death as the entrance to Heaven, with the body becoming cold but the spirit living on. (I’m calling this image “extra-biblical” because you won’t find it in actual Scripture.)
3. A reference to the Jordan as a synonym for the Ohio River, the boundary between slave and free states. The struggle to get across that river was a desperate one, fraught with danger but well worth the effort. Once across the former slave would hope to be welcomed and sheltered by those who had escaped before him.
The arrangement I’ve sung with my own choir is by Allen Koepke (who died only recently in 2012) and is certainly challenging, with echoes, key changes, and dissonance all adding to the effect. Koepke wrote this originally for the Prairie High School Choir from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and indeed his career has been quite Iowa-centric even as his work and conducting have made an impression all over the world. I wasn’t able to track down a video of the original performance, sad to say, but I guess back in 1998 it wasn’t as much of a thing to record everything for posterity. The premier was actually at the Washington National Cathedral, but I don’t know what the occasion was.
Anyway, I’ll leave you with this note from our sheet music that I thought perhaps gives a little hint of Koepke’s personality:
The chorus should be conservative with the heel stomps, especially when on risers. An overly aggressive stomp may sound exciting, but it may bring down the choir rather than the house.
Words to live by!
