“Down to the River to Pray”African American SpiritualWorship & Song, 3164

As I went down to the river to pray,studyin’ about that good ole way andwho shall wear the starry crown [robe and crown],good Lord, show me the way.O sisters, let’s go down,let’s go down, come on down.Come on, sisters, let’s go down,down to the river to pray.

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When the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? was released in 2000, “Down to the River to Pray” captured the imagination of the musical world. In a poignant scene, the performance by bluegrass singer Allison Maria Krauss provides the backdrop for a white-robed throng slowly processing past the lead characters down to a tranquil river in rural Mississippi to be baptized. Since the film debuted, numerous choral arrangements have appeared. Many choral groups throughout the United States and beyond (including The King’s Singers) have renditions available on YouTube.

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Attributions in hymnals published since the film range from “American folk song” and “Southern folk song” to African American spiritual. Because of the song’s “river” language and its context in the film, “Down to the River” appears in the Baptism or Christian Initiation sections of collections, beginning with the Catholic hymnal Gather Comprehensive: Second Edition (Chicago, 2004).

Slave Songs of the United States (New York, 1867), the first collection of folk songs published in the United States and containing the earliest printed version of the song, includes an early version titled “The Good Old Way.” Though published after the Civil War, this collection is a primary source for antebellum African American songs. Slave Songs was compiled by Northern abolitionists William Francis Allen, Lucy McKim Garrison, and Charles Pickard Ware during the early years of the Civil War in the 1860s, primarily in the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina. White plantation owners fled the islands as the Union Army advanced near the beginning of the war. They left their property in the hands of the Union forces and the formerly enslaved Africans who had toiled previously in bondage under their masters. Ascribed in the index (No. 104) to “Mr. G[eorge] H. Allan,” Nashville, it is included in section “III. Inland Slave States: Including Tennessee, Arkansas, and the Mississippi River.” Allan most likely transmitted the song orally or transcribed it for the compilers by memory rather than composing it himself.

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