Michael Row The Boat Ashore: A Song History

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"Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" is a spiritual of the Gullah people of the Sea Islands, off the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia.[1] It was printed in Slave Songs of the United States (New York, 1867), compiled by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware and Lucy McKim Garrison, where it is No. 31, credited to the Port Royal Islands and to Ware.[2] The introduction rates Ware's collection, gathered chiefly at Coffin's Point on St. Helena Island, as likely the fullest and most reliable of its kind, and the book reproduces all of it as its core.[2] The Smithsonian Folkways notes place the collecting of this version on St. Helena Island during the Civil War.[1] In November 1861 a U.S. Navy fleet had entered Port Royal Sound near Beaufort; nearly all the white planters fled inland, and when Union troops came ashore weeks later, they found the area in the hands of thousands of formerly enslaved people.[3]

Peter Henry Emerson photograph of a man rowing a small boat loaded with reeds across still water

Peter Henry Emerson, Rowing Home the Schoof-Stuff, platinum print, 1886. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its boat; it has no connection to the song.

In his introduction to the book, Allen observes that the islanders rowed to the same songs that accompanied their religious shout; he knew "only one pure boat-song," he writes, and it was this one, which he judged a genuine spiritual addressed to the archangel Michael.[2] A note from Ware quoted there explains that each stroke of the oars took two measures of music, and lists this song among those sung when the boat was heavily loaded or pulling against the tide.[2] The Folkways notes likewise identify Michael as the archangel who ferries the souls of the dead.[1]

The song's modern career began in the folk revival. According to a WGBH Alumni obituary, the Boston folk singer Tony Saletan came across it in 1954 in a Harvard library copy of Slave Songs while preparing to lead singing at a summer work camp; he gave it a guitar part and swapped the original verses for rhyming couplets from African American tradition. That summer he sang it at a Pete Seeger concert, and Seeger asked to learn it.[4] Smithsonian Folkways also says Seeger learned it from Saletan, and counts it among the Weavers' more popular songs.[1] The Highwaymen, a group formed by five Wesleyan University freshmen in 1958, recorded it under the short title "Michael."[5] Their United Artists single reached No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 on the chart dated September 4, 1961, and held the top spot for a second week.[6][7]

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Sources

  1. Smithsonian Folkways (Jeff Place): "Pete Seeger: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection" (liner notes, SFW 40225).
  2. Internet Archive (Smithsonian Libraries): "Slave Songs of the United States" (Allen, Ware & Garrison, 1867).
  3. National Park Service: "The Port Royal Experiment".
  4. WGBH Alumni: "Tony Saletan, 94, Folk Musician and Producer".
  5. Wesleyan University Class Notes: "David L. Fisher '62".
  6. Billboard: "Billboard Hot 100, Week of September 4, 1961".
  7. Billboard: "Billboard Hot 100, Week of September 11, 1961".