Crossing the River

When I was about the same age as you are now, I belonged to a volunteer performance group called the Civic Singers of Toledo (my hometown).  The Civic Singers was a group culled mostly from the choirs of various local churches, who performed each Monday night a secular program for a rotating group of nursing homes and retirement communities.  The women wore formal gowns, and the men wore red jackets, white shirts, and black bow ties.  I was in high school, and the average age of the remaining group members was well over 60; my involvement with this group is one of the fondest memories I have of my hometown.

While the program we performed would change from year to year, one song that always made it into our repertoire was Deep River, an old spiritual of African American origin.  It started out so slow and quiet that you could barely hear the singing, but by the time we reached the bridge, the volume rose to a focused intensity, and the house nearly shook with an emotional crying out:

Deep River.  My home is over Jordan.  Deep River, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.

Oh, don't you want to go, To the Gospel feast; That Promised Land, Where all is peace?

Oh, Deep River, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.

The beauty of the song left an impression on me (even now I can sing the baritone part by heart), but I didn't really think too much about the lyrics at the time.

What are frequently referred to today as 19th-century Negro spirituals were generally created by enslaved African Americans, usually of Christian origin, as a direct response to the abject misery and woe that frequently comprised their lives.  The Jordan River is frequently mentioned in these spirituals, a fact I noticed, but didn't think about too much as a teenager.  The symbol of the Jordan River was borrowed by the slave community directly from the Jewish tradition; this was the river that the Hebrews finally crossed to reach the promised land.  As it turns out, the Jordan River was also an unofficial name enslaved African Americans gave to the Ohio River, north of which lay all of free states.  Crossing the River Jordan, then, was a symbol for escaping to freedom, of reaching the promised land, and what would surely be a better life.  These dreams of escape made their way into any number of spirituals, usually sung by the enslaved, the miserable, and the bereft.

In reality though, very few of the enslaved actually escaped, and those that did never experienced the utopia they were hoping for.  After hundreds of years of oppressive slavery, the River Jordan began to symbolically represent something else - the only hope left available to the hopeless after years of despair - the hope for a quick and peaceful death.  Countless numbers of early spirituals, if listened to with a careful ear, never express a hope for freedom, or a better life, or anything with any degree of optimism.  Instead, these spirituals all pine desperately for the day that their singers can finally be with their maker, free of the daily torment, and at long last at peace.  Imagine the kind of grief and melancholy you must feel to have your only true wish to be for a restful and timely death.  To sing Deep River was to understand a sorrow so great that only death could offer relief; heady stuff for a 16-year-old in a red coat and bow tie.

Some years later, I found myself rehearsing for a dinner theatre production of Show Boat in the same town.  I had been cast at the age of 20 as half of the entire male chorus (the Westgate Dinner Theatre didn't boast a big stage).  Deep River had actually been included in the original version of Show Boat, but at 4-1/2 hours, the show needed to be cut, and Deep River didn't make the grade.  But a snipet of another spiritual song, Mis'ry's Comin' Round, remained in Act I, sung by the black chorus.  Our music director decided to cut this brief song as well.  After all, he explained, the song was rather slow and boring, and didn't advance the plot.


Our director, based in New York, flew in shortly thereafter, and once he learned of the cut, he threw an enormous tantrum, and immediately restored the song.  The director gathered everyone in the rehearsal room, where he explained at length the underlying historical context for the lyrics of the song, and described the emotional power of its underlying yearning for death.  After his explanation, the music director sat at his piano and quietly played the first plaintive notes of the piece; the actors looked at each other, and then started to perform the song with a new understanding.  No one watching this new performance was unmoved; I remember having tears in my eyes as I listened to the black chorus pour what sounded like a lifetime of pain into their singing.

I remembered that experience some years later still, when I was directing a production of Big River (the musical version of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).  Big River contains a scene featuring a number of slaves who are chained together being transported by their masters in a skiff across the Mississippi River.  Along the way, they sing The Crossing, which of course isn't really about crossing a river. Have a listen:




It almost seems crass and obvious to mention that Urinetown takes this Negro spiritual river motif, and turns it on its head.  At the end of Act II, Hope launches into I See A River, first by mimicking the voice of a gutsy blues singer, to establish her gospel roots (a strange juxtaposition for such a rich white girl).  The river that Hope sings about represents something for which her people are desperately yearning; but here, the river doesn't represent freedom, or equality, or even a peaceful death.  In the midst of an oppressive drought, this river represents - water.  Using a river as a metaphor for water is about as literal an interpretation as any found in the show, and is an appropriate final jolt for an audience that has by this time, suffered enough.