Swing Low, Sweet Chariot 
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.

[Refrain]

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.

[Refrain]

Swing Low Sweet Chariot is a spiritual song that really goes deep into the messaging it wishes for not only its own personal audience, but one that has evolved into new forms that have taken on their own meaning throughout the years. The piece has made its way into so many pieces of media that it takes on the meaning of what that media wishes for it to represent. As it came it came as a great surprise to me that upon researching the topic and listening to the full original song, its original purpose came into an entirely new perspective. 

When I originally heard “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” it was very much a different atmosphere and style then in the original. This was in a cartoon and it was mostly played for a darkly comedic subversion. Only the title was sung and it was sung when a father had to flush down his son’s dead goldfish only then to quickly go to the store and buy another one so that his son would not know the difference between the goldfish and not have his young heart broken. This repeated several times until the father would only sing “Swing Low…” before the show would just cut to him flushing the evidence away. My experience with this when I was young made me think of “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” as less of a song and more of a phrase one would say when trying to respect the dead. It was only with this research that I would gain a better understanding of what the poem really meant to the people who created it. 

The original writer of the lyrics of “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” are unknown, that it is because it was originally sung as an African-American spiritual and was sung by those who were enslaved on plantations in the American South. As they sang about the freedom they would get from either their death or by being able to escape to the north. The angels in the song could reference the angels coming to pick them up and send them to their ultimate destination which would be heaven and away from being forced to work without end. However some aspects differ like James Martin, a spirituals expert and Juilliard graduate says that, “Sweet Chariot was a sign of hope that someone was coming to help… So it has always been not just an inspirational hope but a real hope.” 

It has also come to my attention that this song has been sung by English rugby fans as early as the 1960’s and has taken on as their sort of team song when cheering for their team along with rude gestures to point at the opposing teams. This creates a problem as some say that it is very inappropriate to turn a song about the horrors of slavery into a song to encourage your home rugby team. This issue came to light as recently as the 2020’s as the black lives matter protests have brought many similar issues to the public eye. These people who may have thought it was just a song to sing in bars and pubs could very well be taking the place in a sort of mockery of those who sung these songs to mourn the loss of those lost to slavery. Which really puts the entire song into question when used by others. 

As I mentioned when I first heard the song it was in a comedic situation and that is where it will always be in my memory of the first time I heard it. However it now comes to my attention that it has a much deeper and impactful meaning that could be considered offensive to those who hold it in very high regard. I feel like it would have been just as easy if the writers were to use another song that can be associated with the dead, without being potentially offensive to the African-Americans who were once enslaved. They could have used another song or have written their own version of the song. Either way I as a writer will take more care into what I plan on sampling in the future if I just wish for simple laughs.

Works Cited 

Eversley, Melanie. “Story behind Spiritual ‘Swing Chariot’ Emerges.” USA Today, Gannett   Satellite Information Network, Dec. 2018, usatoday30.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20060815/d_sweetchariot.art.htm. 

Gardner, Jamie. “‘I Hate Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ Says Former Hooker Brian Moore.” The Scotsman, 19 June 2020, www.scotsman.com/sport/rugby-union/i-hate-swing-low-sweet-chariot-says-former-hooker-brian-moore-2890266. 

https://www.watersedgemuseum.org/childrens-tour-swing-low-sweet-chariot