Go Down, Moses | Themes
Freedom
“Go Down, Moses,” a spiritual with its origins in the slave community of the southern United States, adopts the Biblical story of Moses from the book of Exodus to express the unquenchable desire for freedom felt by the African Americans held in captivity. Any study of the body of spirituals will reveal that this hunger is the clear and overriding theme of the genre. In his detailed study of the origins and meanings of the African-American spirituals, Black Song: The Forge and the Flame, John Lovell, Jr. states that “There is hardly a better way to...
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