GO DOWN MOSES
“Go Down Moses” is an American Negro spiritual. It describes events in the Old Testament of the Bible, in which God commands Moses to demand the release of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. Going “down” to Egypt is derived from the Biblical origin; Moses was up on the mountain of God when God commanded him to go to Egypt. In the context of American slavery, this ancient sense of “down” converged with the concept of “down the river” (the Mississippi), where slaves’ conditions were notoriously worse, a situation which left the idiom “sell [someone] down the river” in present-day English. (More from Wikipedia)
Other famous Negro spirituals include “Go Down Moses”, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen”, and “Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)”. Some modern songs have the distinct feel of Negro spirituals, such as Andraé Crouch’s “Soon and Very Soon” and James Cleveland’s “I Don’t Feel No-Ways Tired”.
(March 2015)
