Songs of enslavement, resistance, and the journey to freedom
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/8/16/800084520/series/songs-of-enslavement-resistance-and-the-journey-to-freedom/
Songs of enslavement, resistance, and the journey to freedom
Legendary activist and longtime Daily Kos contributor Denise Oliver Velez sadly passed away on July 15. She left us with an astounding collection of stories dedicated to celebrating Black music. Daily Kos hopes to honor her memory by continuing to share these timeless pieces.
This story originally ran Aug. 20, 2023.
Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music. With 170 stories (and counting) covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack, I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
As racist right-wing governing bodies attempt to erase teaching the truth about this country’s birth and growth that were sustained by enslaving Black people, it’s important to mark an historic date in that history: the Jamestown landing on Aug. 20, 1619, and The New York Times’ ambitious and award-winning “The 1619 Project,” launched on the 400th anniversary in 2019.
While slavery here actually began earlier, “The 1619 Project” brought enslavement back into the mainstream discussion, which has only intensified over the past four years. Such debates—as well as the pure BS being spewed in support of Florida’s claims of slavery’s “benefits” to those in bondage—got me thinking about the music that tells the story of the brutal voyages here, and the fates that befell enslaved Africans and their descendants once—or if—they arrived.
Related | Who’s afraid of the 1619 Project?
One of the most powerful pieces of music to tell the story of the ships bringing enslaved Africans here through the Middle Passage was sung by an unlikely group of R&B musicians and childhood friends: The O’Jays. In 2021, Otis Alexander profiled the group for Black Past.
The O’Jays, an R&B ensemble from Canton, Ohio, was formed in 1958 by childhood friends Eddie Levert, who was born in Bessemer, Alabama in 1942 and moved to Canton at the age of 8, and Walter Williams, Sr. born in Canton in 1942. They became best friends and a singing duet in 1958. The duo invited other schoolmates who could sing, William Powell, born in Canton in 1942; Bobby Massey, born in Canton in 1942; and Bill Isles, born in 1941 in McAntenville, North Carolina, also joined. The five, all of whom attended McKinley High School in Canton, first called themselves the Triumphs but in 1960 they changed their name to the Mascots. In 1961, The Mascots released a single, “Miracles,” on the Cincinnati-based King label. Their song was actively promoted by Eddie O’Jay, a popular disc jockey in Cleveland, Ohio. As a tribute to him, they in 1963 rename themselves the O’Jays.
[…]
Kenny Gamble & Leon A. Huff signed the O’Jays to their Philadelphia International label in 1972 and there they had their first and only million-selling single, “Back Stabbers” which reached #1 on the R&B chart and no. #3 pop on the US Billboard Hot 100 later that year. In 1973, their hit “Love Train” followed, peaking at #9 on the R&B chart. Unusual for an R&B song, the lyrics of “Love Train” promoted global unity. While not as successful as “Back Stabbers,” it went gold, selling more than 500,000 copies. Many music critics considered it the birth of Philadelphia-style soul music.
In late 1973, the O’Jays built upon the “Back Stabbers” success with a hit album entitled “Ship Ahoy.” However, the titular song, written by Gamble and Huff, got very little radio airplay—in no small part because it was nearly 10 minutes long!
Allen Castle of the “10 Minute Record Reviews” YouTube channel covers the background of the record—including bits about its production, Gamble and Huff, and the O’Jays.
Give a listen to the chilling “Ship Ahoy.”
Professor Sasha Panaram wrote “’Ship Ahoy’: The Sounds of Slavery” for the 2014 Black Atlantic seminar at Duke University.
The song, “Ship Ahoy,” itself is unlike anything of its time. First off, “Ship Ahoy” is nine minutes and forty seconds long – three times the length of any song typically produced today or even in the 1970s. The first voice of the song that appears roughly forty-seconds after the song begins is that of a long drawn out groan or sigh. Prior to this voice, listeners sense they are on a ship after hearing sounds resembling strong winds, splashing water, wooden creaks, and thunderous storms. When the O’Jays start singing their lyrics describe the people onboard – “men, women, and baby slaves” – and their journey to the “land of liberty” where “life’s design is already made.” As the O’Jays sing of the tiring journey across the Atlantic, the only constant in the slaves’ lives is the sun that beats down on them. By the end of the song, the O’Jays initial description of the “land of liberty” becomes a “jail” – an unpromising destination where slaves are beaten, exploited for labor, and forever subordinate to their masters.
While the lyrics of “Ship Ahoy” tell of the exhaustive journey of the Middle Passage and the slaves arrival in the Americas, the silences of the song are equally important. The long gaps and pauses apparent throughout the song and especially at the beginning reflect the waiting that the slaves endured as they were shipped from one location to another. Although the long pause at the start of the song is unsettling to listeners since we are used to hearing words shortly after the music begins, the silence attempts to replicate in listeners the feeling of uncertainty in slaves who embarked on journeys with very few details, if any, about their impending trips. The one phrase used the most in the O’Jays song is “Ship Ahoy.” “Ship Ahoy” is the phrase the O’Jays belt out between verses. While the exact origin of this phrase is unknown, “Ship Ahoy” was generally used by sailors to both greet ships and announce their presence. That the O’Jays choose to not only name their song “Ship Ahoy,” but also repeat the phrase excessively throughout the song suggests their desire to call attention to the hundreds upon thousands of ships that facilitated the Middle Passage.
Here are the lyrics:
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy, yeah
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy
As far as your eyes can see
Men, women, and baby slaves
Coming to the land of Liberty
Where life’s design is already made
So young and so strong
They’re just waiting to be saved…
Lord, I’m so tired
And I know you’re tired too
Look over the horizon, see the sun
Shining down on you…
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy, yeah
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy. uh-huh
Can’t you feel the motion of the ocean
Can’t you feel the cold wind blowing by?
There’s so many fish in the seaWe’re just, we’re just, we’re just
We’re just masts?
Riding on the waves…
The waves
We are
Riding on the waves…
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy, now yeah
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
They’re coming by the hundreds
Coming by the thousands, too
Look over the horizon, see the sun
Shining down on you…
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
My-yyy
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
We’re just, we’re just, we’re just
We’re just masts?
Riding on the waves…
The waves
We are
Riding on the waves…Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!
Totin’ that barge, lift that bail
Get a little something, gonna land in jail
Somebody bite the whip
I’m your master
And you’re my slave
Uh-huh
And you’re my slave
I’m your master
Look over there, what do you see
Tell him look over here, what do you see
To me poetry is music in words. Today’s selection is from poet Robert Hayden, who Poet.org describes as “the first Black American to be appointed as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress (later called the poet laureate).”
Born Asa Bundy Sheffey on August 4, 1913, Robert Hayden was raised in the Detroit neighborhood Paradise Valley. He had an emotionally tumultuous childhood and lived, at times, with his parents and with a foster family. In 1932, he graduated from high school and, with the help of a scholarship, attended Detroit City College (later, Wayne State University). In 1944, Hayden received his graduate degree from the University of Michigan.
Hayden published his first book of poems, Heart-Shape in the Dust (Falcon Press), in 1940, at the age of twenty-seven. He enrolled in a graduate English literature program at the University of Michigan, where he studied with W. H. Auden. Auden became an influential and critical guide in the development of Hayden’s writing. Hayden admired the work of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elinor Wiley, Carl Sandburg, and Hart Crane, as well as the poets of the Harlem Renaissance—Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Jean Toomer. He had an interest in African American history and explored his concerns about race in his writing. Hayden ultimately authored nine collections of poetry during his lifetime, as well as a collection of essays, and some children’s literature. Hayden’s poetry gained international recognition in the 1960s, and he was awarded the grand prize for poetry at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal in 1966 for his book Ballad of Remembrance (Paul Breman, 1962).
Hayden published “Middle Passage” in 1945.
During and after the Middle Passage, many of the enslaved Africans from areas around Benin, and those who later embraced the faith of Vodou after arriving in the New World, called down curses on their enslavers. One of the most powerful deities in the Vodou pantheon is the Lwa Damballah: the Sky Father.
Bahamian folk musician Exuma wrote and recorded this song to Dambala in 1970, and Nina Simone covered it in 1974. It is one of Simone’s most powerful songs, if still not very well-known, half a century later.
Listening to her rendition makes the hair on my arms stand up.
Oh Dambala, come Dambala
Oh Dambala, come Dambala
Think of the wings of a three-toed frog
Eat weeds from the deepest part of sea
Oh Dambala, come Dambala
Oh Dambala, come Dambala
On the seventh day, God will be there
On the seventh night, satan will be there
On the seventh day, God will appear
On the seventh night, satan will be there
You slavers will know
What it’s like to be a slave
Slave to your heart
Slave to your soul
Oh Dambala, come Dambala
Oh Dambala, come Dambala
You slavers will know
What it’s like to be a slave
Slave to your mind
Slave to your race
You won’t go to heaven
You won’t go to hell
You remain in your graves
With the stench and the smell
Oh Dambala, come Dambala
Oh Dambala, come Dambala
Enslaved women were often faced with the agony of having their children sold and sent away from them, many of those children born out of rape. In 2017’s “At the Purchaser’s Option,” Grammy award-winning folksinger, musician, and music historian Rhiannon Giddens sings the story of one of those women.
From the video’s YouTube notes:
“Last year I came across an advertisement from the 1830s for a young woman; thinking about her, and how she had to maintain her humanity against horrific odds inspired this song named for the end of the ad: ‘She has with her a 9-month old baby, who is at the purchaser’s option.” — Rhiannon
At the Purchaser’s Option (Rhiannon Giddens/Joey Ryan)
I have a babe but shall I keep him
‘Twill come the day when I’ll be weepin’
But how can I love him any less
This little babe upon my breastYou can take my body
You can take my bones
You can take my blood
But not my soulI’ve got a body dark and strong
I was young but not for long
You took me to bed a little girl
Left me in a woman’s worldDay by day I work the line
Every minute overtime
Fingers nimble, fingers quick
My fingers bleed to make you rich
As enslaved people adopted the religion of their enslavers, they often used their permitted Sunday gathering to sing spiritual and gospel songs—songs that carried messages, hopes, dreams, and plans to escape to freedom.
Related | Black music is Black history: Our spirituals
One of those such songs was “Old Ship of Zion,” sung below by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, civil rights activist, ethnomusicologist, and founder of the music group Sweet Honey In The Rock.
In the liner notes of her 1975 album” Give Your Hands to Struggle,” Reagon wrote:
“’The Old Ship of Zion,’ a spiritual and gospel hymn, is also associated with the culture of the 19th century Underground Railroad. A congregational singing of this song goes on for many verses as the singers build it together. You can add as many verses as you like about this image of a ship bringing hope and life, set against the memory of that other ship of slavery and death. The song has probably remained so important because of its connection to those of us who are living evidence of having survived the experience.”
Give it a listen.
When I think of songs providing a roadmap for those running toward freedom, I always think of “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” though on a website devoted to the song, music researcher Joel Bresler challenges that notion.
The Drinking Gourd song was supposedly used by an Underground Railroad operative to encode escape instructions and a map. These directions then enabled fleeing slaves to make their way north from Mobile, Alabama to the Ohio River and freedom.
[…]
Much of the Drinking Gourd’s enduring appeal derives from its perceived status as a unique, historical remnant harkening back to the pre-Civil War South – no other such map songs survive. But re-examining the Drinking Gourd song as history rather than folklore raises many questions.
No matter the history, my favorite version was sung by folk singer Richie Havens, which he recorded in 1991.
I’m closing this week’s installment with a tribute to the escape to freedom led by Harriet Tubman. Actress and singer Cynthia Erivo wrote and performed “Stand Up” for the 2019 movie “Harriet.”
I been walkin’
With my face turned to the sun
Weight on my shoulders
A bullet in my gun
Oh, I got eyes in the back of my head
Just in case I have to run
I do what I can when I can while I can for my people
While the clouds roll back and the stars fill the nightThat’s when I’m gonna stand up
Take my people with me
Together we are going
To a brand new home
Far across the river
Can you hear freedom calling?
Calling me to answer
Gonna keep on keepin’ on
I can feel it in my bonesEarly in the mornin’
Before the sun begins to shine
We’re gonna start movin’
Towards that separating line
I’m wadin’ through muddy waters
You know I got a made up mind
And I don’t mind if I lose any blood on the way to salvation
And I’ll fight with the strength that I got until I dieSo I’m gonna stand up
Take my people with me
Together we are going
To a brand new home
Far across the river
Can you hear freedom calling?
Calling me to answer
Gonna keep on keepin’ onAnd I know what’s around the bend
Might be hard to face ’cause I’m alone
And I just might fail
But Lord knows I tried
Sure as stars fill up the skyStand up
Take my people with me
Together we are going
To a brand new home
Far across the river
Can you hear freedom calling?
Calling me to answer
Gonna keep on keepin’ onI’m gonna stand up
Take my people with me
Together we are going
To a brand new home
Far across the river
Do you hear freedom calling?
Calling me to answer
Gonna keep on keepin’ onI’m gonna stand up
Take my people with me
Together we are going
To a brand new home
Far across the river
I hear freedom calling
Calling me to answer
Gonna keep on keepin’ on
I can feel it in my bonesI go to prepare a place for you
I go to prepare a place for you
I go to prepare a place for you
I go to prepare a place for you
This song evokes strong feelings in me personally: It reminds me of my mom’s great aunt Sally, who escaped from enslavement in Loudoun County, Virginia, at age 15, walking all the way to freedom and “a brand new home” in Canada.
Please join me in the comments for more music, and as always, I hope you will post songs that helped you learn the stories of enslavement.
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