Deep river

Deep river. African American spiritual*, date unknown. This much-loved and very beautiful spiritual is of unknown origin. Like ‘Roll Jordan, roll’, which was the first number in Slave Songs of the United States*, it celebrates Jordan (the ‘deep river’) as the traditional river of death, which in this case leads to ‘campground’, a place of rest and a promised land where all is peace. It is based on Joshua 3: 17, in which the people of Israel passed ‘clean over Jordan’. Here the singer claims that ‘my home is over Jordan’, using the idea that ‘Heaven is my home’, in contrast to the servitude and misery of a slave’s life on earth. For commentary on rivers as literary devices in African...