Assignment: Spirituals

“Ezekiel Saw De Wheel”

1. I picked this poem because, from all the poems I read in this lesson, I felt that this one
was the most appealing, had the deepest meanings conveyed in the simplest of ways. And
yet, it sounded like a beautiful song too, that I could happily and easily sing to. Most of
these songs are rather painful musings sung and written by the early African - Americans,
most of which were ill-fated. They were forcefully shipped into the United States and
other parts of the world, enduring the most inhumane conditions, and were left choiceless
and forced into extreme slavery. In their maritime, they would look up to the sky and sing
their hopes and dreams away.
This particular song was written by William L. Dawson, and it aptly ties the African
Spiritual Traditions to Christianity. This song hugely relates to Vernacular, since the
language in it focuses more on the “orals” and not the written. It focuses more on the way
it's “sounds” since sound and music bear a very important role in the African (regional)
culture. They sang for their sorrow and sadness. First, when we read the lines,
“Ezekiel saw de wheel
Way up in the middle of de air”
we can easily notice how instead of using “the”, the song writes “de”, which is
commonly how they pronounce it in a spoken African language. This is the very first sign
of Vernacular – not so formally written, but it still conveys the meaning. This man has a
strong belief in God, which is why he says “The big wheel run by faith”, meaning that if
you believe hard enough, there certainly is a God overlooking you from up in the air/sky,
who has created this whole world and owns everything. The “little wheel” is run by the
grace of that very God, and it is interesting to see how in the African vernacular,
everything is believed to be dependent on and run by the mercy of God. The sky up
above signifies hope and a sense of higher power (heaven), which helps the slaves live
another day and keep pushing.
In the next paragraph, we can again see a strong vernacular reference, because the man
refers to his fellow human beings as “brothers”, particularly even the slave-owners, and
politely warns them about how God is watching everything they do, and so if their deeds
are bad, or if you have evil motivations, their foot might slip and soul lost, which is his
way of saying that there will be repercussions and that the bad karma will return to them
and will make them pay and suffer, that they will easily deviate from their path, without
them even realizing, and will eventually lose their purpose in life.
The Africans have a strong belief in the sayings of the Bible, which is why they try to
stay cautious of the material world’s desires and refer to them as the Devil, or the
“Satan”. He thus says that if you walk down the wrong path, and even commit the
slightest of sins, then Satan i.e., the evil desires will easily trap you deeper and deeper
 into the spiral, and slip the club foot shoe on you i.e., give you pain and suffering from
which there will be no way out.
Thus, in this song, we can see strong references to the African way of singing their pain
and stories of their hope, and also their strong belief in God, and we can see how it is
written to preserve the rhythm of the song. This is why I believe it strongly relates to
vernacular.

2. A.) The song “City Called Heaven” is very aptly written which captures the moments of
hope and joy of the slave, as well as his most miserable, hopeless, and painful moments.
The man sings, “I am a poor pilgrim of sorrow”, by which he doesn’t simply mean that
he is unhappy, but he thus refers to the whole of “slavery” in general. We can understand
from it that the “City Called Heaven” can have two meanings: One could be God’s own
home i.e., actual heaven, wherein he hopes to go to once he dies. But very importantly,
the other can be the “free world”, probably a city that has become free of slavery, and
thus provides a promise-land to all these poor captured slaves. Furthermore, when we
read the song, we realize that the slave says, “Sometimes I don’t know where to roam”,
which can mean that he has no hope of living and is uncertain of his near future. He isn’t
sure if he will even live to see the next day, probably because he’s been abused, over-
exploited, and been kept hungry and thirsty. But what it might also mean is that he is
stuck in one place, meaning he is chained down as a punishment and has no way out of
that dark room. And he has no idea if he’ll ever be let out into the sun again. He goes
even further to say, “My mother’s gone on to pure glory”, by which he might mean that
they broke the spirit of his mother a long time ago, and therefore she is long dead and has
gone to heaven, back to their very God. But the dark, more painful hidden meaning might
even be that he is not even aware of his mother’s whereabouts i.e., the slave-owners
might’ve separated them away, which means that his mother might still be alive, maybe
free, maybe enslaved as well, but so far away that he might never able to see her ever
again.

B.) All these spirituals (songs), and “Ezekiel Saw De Wheel” in particular has a deeply
embarked double meaning to them. When they refer to “heaven”, they do not just simply
refer to God’s home and his big altar (the good afterlife), but they also imply to the “free
world”, where there is no pain, where there is freedom, and where they would not be
treated so poorly, and be given their basic human rights! (For example, Canada, or the
other free states). This man has a strong belief in God, which is why he says “The big
wheel run by faith”, meaning that there is a good, wise God up there who is watching and
guarding everything. The wheel represents the universe, the path we travel through this
world, and the afterlife. It also symbolizes a big Circle, or in our case, the Sun, which
sustains all life forms in this world, and the spokes of the wheel signify the rays of our
Sun!
C.) “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” is a famous song written/sung by another slave in his
happy and hopeful pastime, wherein he seems to refer to this imaginary, holy Chariot of
the God that would come to finally carry his soul back to Heaven, to Jesus’ big altar
where everything is happy and there is no more pain. But what blows my mind is that this
spiritual might just actually have had one of the deepest, most important, and tactical
secret messages hidden for the slaves – they would sing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”,
Coming for To Carry Me Home” to alert each other at the time when “A band of angels”
i.e., a Tubman, a Conductor, or one of their “brothers” were about to come to their
rescue, open the gates to their captivities, and lead them to “Heaven”, which signifies
freedom!