Story of a Song: Steal Away

Peter Bacon (Tenor) investigates our repertoire. This month: Steal Away.

A classic American Negro Spiritual, Steal Away was composed by Wallace Willis, a slave, sometime before 1862. Alexander Reid, a minister, heard Willis singing it, transcribed the words and melody, and sent the music to the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. The Fisk Jubilee Singers were formed in 1871 at a school for freed slaves in order to help save the school from being closed. The choir toured America in order to raise money, and even came to Europe where they performed for Queen Victoria (more here).

It is believed that songs like Steal Away and Wade In The Water had double meanings for the slaves who sang them. Not only did the words reflect their faith and that they would one day “steal away to Jesus” but also acted as code to their fellow workers that they were going to seek to escape their slave-owners, that they would “steal away” via the secret network called the Underground Railroad that would help them reach the northern U.S. states or Canada where they would be free.

One academic has suggested other lines in the song have this double meaning too. “He calls me by the thunder”, for example, refers to the fact that stealing away during a storm was safer because the rains washed away clues that might lead the trackers and their dogs to find the fleeing slave.

Steal Away has been recorded by gospel, rock, country, folk, classical and soul singers; the composer Michael Tippett chose it to form part of his oratorio A Child Of Our Time.

The arrangement we sing is by Colin Anderson, director of Town Hall Gospel Choir in Birmingham.

Hear the Fisk Jubilee Singers singing Steal Away just last year.

And there is an hour-long educational performance (including some other familiar songs) that the Fisk Jubilee Singers gave as part of the Kennedy Center Education Digital Learning programme here.