Although John Denver’s song isn’t in our top ten lists, it perfectly encapsulates our longing for home. America has an add relationship to home. Except for the Native Americans, everyone who came to America, was for at least some time, homeless. And for the Native American’s we forced them off their lands, so in a way we were all on the same field.
When people sing about home, they’re singing about a universal need, but one framed by their specific stories and histories. And home is a tricky concept to pin down. Is it a physical place? A sense of safety? The concept of belonging? Three narratives appear in the top songs of the 1870s, showing contrasting views of what home could be.
In “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” heaven is our home. One of the most well known African-American Gospel songs, it was composed in the1860s by Wallace and Minerva Willis, and is still a staple today, one with astonishing power. Covered by everyone, from the Frisk SIngers to Dolly Parton to the Grateful Dead, it disturbed the Nazi’s so much that it was added to a list of “undesired and harmful” musical works in 1939.
“My Western Home” places home in the open plains of the midwest. Written in 1872/3 by Dr. Brewster M. Higley, a homesteader in Kansas, it eventually evolved into what we now know as “Home on the Range”. It became the official state song of Kansas in 1947 and in 2010 was included in the Top 100 western songs of all time.
“I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen” offers a nostalgic view of home far away. Often assumed to be an Irish song, it was written by a German-American, Thomas Paine Westendorf, in the 1870s. Whether it was the use of a common Irish name of the time, or the narrative, it became embedded in Irish-American culture and is still a favorite of Irish (and all) tenors today.
For the singers of “My Western Home” and “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen”, home is a real, physical place. In Kansas, a world of earthly delights and open spaces: in (implied) Ireland, a humble cottage. While “My Western Home” queries whether heaven itself can compare to the wonder seen in front of their home, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” stands out by placing the home yearned for there, in a place not on this earth. These choices echo events of the time – Kansas homesteaders were part of the confident expectations of Manifest Destiny. Kathleen, in the song, mirrors immigrants to the U.S. fleeing the Great Famine in Ireland. For the singers of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, enslavement left no physical home to return to.
When it comes to company or companions in the home, “My Western Home” is the lone cowboy. Both “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen”, and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” see home as populated with friends (and in “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” implied family). However, in “My Western Home” there is no mention of another person. There’s a nod to “this land of ours” which implies some type of community, but its population consists of deer, antelope, and birds. This singer is solo, a striking contrast to the often used call and response in “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” which creates vocal community.
Both “My Western Home” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” have a strong expectation that home will be reached: either in the now or in the future afterlife respectively. In “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen”, while the promise is earnestly made, the pathos of the song is the implied understanding that Kathleen will not go home again.