Deep River: A Song History

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"Deep River" is an African American spiritual, one of the religious folk songs that the Library of Congress ties above all to the enslavement of African people in the American South.^[1] In an article on the song's history, C. Michael Hawn reads the river Jordan, a frequent image in the spirituals, as the border to be crossed toward deliverance, which for enslaved people could mean release from bondage in this life as well as the next; he also cites Howard Thurman's point that, for someone in a border state, getting across a river could open the way to freedom in the North or in Canada.^[2] Fisk University had opened in Nashville in 1865 to teach freed people and was badly in debt by 1871, when the Fisk Jubilee Singers were organized to raise money for it.^[3] The Library of Congress credits this chorus of formerly enslaved singers with drawing attention to the spiritual far beyond the United States in the 1870s.^[1] The earliest known printing of "Deep River" is in J. B. T. Marsh's The Story of the Jubilee Singers, a history of the group published with their songs. Sources differ on the first edition to include it: a University of Pittsburgh guide gives a London edition of 1875, while Hawn dates it from 1877 and cites an 1881 revised edition in which it is No. 77.^[2]^[4]

Photochrom of the River Jordan lined with reeds and brush, about 1890-1900

The River Jordan, Holy Land. Photochrom print, Detroit Publishing Co., about 1890–1900. Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication. The Jordan is the river so often invoked in the spirituals.

In the early twentieth century the spiritual moved into the concert hall. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor made it the tenth piece of his Twenty-Four Negro Melodies for piano, published in Boston by Ditson in 1905.^[2]^[5] Harry T. Burleigh (1866–1949), a baritone and composer who as a student at the National Conservatory in New York had sung spirituals for Antonín Dvořák, arranged it for unaccompanied mixed chorus in 1913 and later as a song for solo voice and piano, issued by G. Ricordi in New York.^[2]^[6]^[7] Sources differ on the date of the solo setting: Library of Congress listings give 1917 and also record a 1916 edition, and Carnegie Hall's timeline places it in Burleigh's 1916 collection Jubilee Songs of the United States of America.^[7]^[8]^[9] The Library's Burleigh guide credits the setting's success with bringing nearly a dozen more of his spirituals into print within the year, and the Carnegie Hall timeline calls it the most famous of his arrangements and a fixture of concert singers' programs.^[6]^[9]

The Library of Congress names Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes and Paul Robeson among the concert singers who gave spirituals a prominent place in their recitals in the 1920s and 1930s.^[1] Anderson recorded Burleigh's arrangement for Victor in Camden, New Jersey, on December 10, 1923, with an orchestra conducted by Rosario Bourdon, and in her autobiography, My Lord, What a Morning (1956), she recalled choosing the song for her audition with the voice teacher Giuseppe Boghetti.^[10]^[11] Robeson recorded the same arrangement for Victor with the pianist Lawrence Brown on May 10, 1927.^[12] The spiritual has a place in congregational singing as well: Hymnary.org counts 36 hymnals that include it, among them the African American Heritage Hymnal and Lift Every Voice and Sing II.^[13]

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