This is yet another of those songs everybody sings and nobody thinks about. Come on, now. Have you ever asked yourself this question? I sure hadn’t.
Once again my good friend Wikipedia put me onto the right track and I’ve gone on from there. As with so many wonderful songs that are entrenched in American music, this one stems from slave spirituals. And, as with the meaning of so many spirituals, it’s a mix of biblical and historical ideas.
Who’s Michael?
He’s Michael the Archangel. He is “the standard bearer” who brings believing souls into “holy light.” Here’s he’s rowing a boat, so the action seems to be totally different but has the same purpose: to escort souls into Heaven.
What’s “the river”?
It’s a mix of the Jordan River, the river of death, and also the river into freedom, as the Ohio River formed the northern boundary of the slave states in some regions. (Did you ever wonder in Huckleberry Finn why Jim and Huck are traveling south down the Mississippi River to get Jim into a free state? It’s for this very reason: they are planning to use the Ohio River to travel into free states and they need to go down to the junction of the Mississippi and the Ohio. Unfortunately they miss the junction in the fog, thus leading to their further adventures. Since the fugitive slave law was in effect at the time even in free states, though, Jim would have had to get all the way to Canada eventually in order to be assured of his freedom.)
The Jordan River was the boundary of the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, in the Old Testament/Jewish Bible Book of Joshua. Canaan was described as a “land flowing with milk and honey,” a sign of its abundance. (Why those two substances in particular? There’s an abundance of info about this very question–one might indeed say that the information is “flowing”–but it boils down to the general idea that milk comes from animals and honey, ultimately, from plants. I’m going to just leave it at that, reluctantly.)
Many cultures have used the image of a river as the division between life and death, and once you have a river to cross you need some kind of boat. So in Greek mythology the boundary between earth and the underworld was the River Styx, with the ferryman Charon acting to bring souls across. You can see how this idea could then morph into a Christianized version, although I don’t find that specific image in Scripture. There are similar ideas, though. Psalm 23 talks about “the valley of the shadow of death,” and in Isaiah God says to His people, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.”
And what’s the “boat”?
In the earliest written version that we have of this song (dating back to the Civil War), the words “Gospel boat” are included. You get safely over the river of death only in the vessel of salvation. As is always the case with a true folk song, though, there are many versions, reflecting an oral tradition that predates the written one(s). The arrangement that I have sung with my own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, uses most of the lyrics from the Pete Seeger version but has left out the lines “The river is deep and the river is cold/Chills the body but not the soul.” These words refer clearly to the idea of the river’s meaning of death. But our version does include the line “Sister help to trim the sail.” Seeger for some reason chose to put in that line but not others that refer to different people. There are references in the original not only to the sister but also to a brother, mother, father, and even the speaker’s master (“I wonder if my maussa deh”). Remember the idea from “She’ll Be Comin’” and “Cindy” that often these folk songs with multiple verses were made up on the spot while people were working and put with a repeated chorus or response. In this one, the chorus is the single word “Hallelujah.”
“Michael” is one of the very few spirituals for which we have somewhat of a known origin. It was first recorded in 1863 on the Georgia Sea Islands, an area cut off from the mainland by channels. The slaves on the Sea Islands therefore did a lot of traveling by boat and sang songs a they rowed. So the song can be classified as a spiritual, a work song, and a sea chantey. Pretty versatile, all in all.
So much more to this song than it seems!
Here’s a video of a 1963 performance by Pete Seeger in Melbourne. I got very tickled with the shots of the audience as they’re being urged to sing along with Peter–most of them are, shall we say, quite unenthusiastic about being asked to participate:
And here’s a possibility for the version Seeger describes as being sung by a “college quartet”–
And here’s a version that harks back much more clearly to this song’s roots–ignore the fancy robes and beautiful church, and listen to the leader’s glorious, glorious voice. This style of the main singer and the chorus is really authentic!
© Debi Simons
