The Reggae Psalm
AM Psalm 137:1-6(7-9), 144 • PM Psalm 104
Jer. 35:1-19 • 1 Cor. 12:27-13:3 • Matt. 9:35-10:4
Someone once defined an intellectual as a person who can hear the William Tell overture and not think of the Lone Ranger. Our psalm today (137) begins, “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.” Maybe we should define a person fully attuned to scripture as someone who can read these words and not think of the reggae classic, “The Rivers of Babylon.” If so, then I don’t qualify as spiritually attuned (or, for that matter, as an intellectual).
The song’s first version, by the Melodians in 1970, appeared two years later in “The Harder They Come,” a movie set in Jamaica that usually is credited with bringing reggae into the music mainstream. A cover in 1978 by the British group Boney M. was an enormous hit globally. The lyrics rearrange the psalm a bit, graft on familiar words from Psalm 19 (“Let the words of my mouth...”), and substitute some words in 137, including “King Alpha” and “Far-I” for “the Lord,” terms for Haile Salassie, revered in the Rastafarian version of Christianity.
The rivers of the psalm are the Tigris and Euphrates, where the Jews were taken into captivity in the 6th century B.C., but Babylon here refers to any place where God’s people live under oppression and in spiritual exile. As such “Rivers of Babylon” became something of an anthem for Blacks in Jamaica and elsewhere.
For fifty years I have loved the song, especially the original, as my first exposure to the irresistible reggae beat and for its simple melody and harmonies. And then, at some point, it became a reminder of how Christianity, for seventeen centuries an institution of power and command, was born among the oppressed, has always drawn on its Jewish roots of exile, and, in my opinion, has always been at its truest when committed to the spirit of those beginnings.
That spirit has always involved resistance, although not the physical sort many expected at the time. Its many forms have included songs, the “We Shall Overcome”s of our musical vocabulary, and therein is the lovely irony of “Rivers of Babylon.” The psalm continues with the Babylonians “requiring” the weeping Jews to sing songs of joy. I cannot hear this, in the psalm or from the Melodians, without thinking of generations of African Americans performing the likes of “Camptown Races” before white audiences.
I also remember others finding the strength and faith to sing other songs “in a strange land”: “Follow the Drinking Gourd” among slaves, Billie Holliday’s “Strange Fruit,” and “Rivers of Babylon.” “You require of us a song?” they ask. “Here’s one.” The words of their mouths and the meditations of their hearts are, I believe, imminently acceptable in God’s sight.
On the remote chance that you don’t know the song, here is a link:
Written by Elliott West
Elliott teaches history at the University of Arkansas. He has been a member of St. Paul’s for thirty years.