Goin' Home

A Timeless Musical Theme

In my effort to avoid political discussion for as long as possible in this space, I would like to point out that Iowa is known for at least five things besides the Iowa Caucuses.

We lived in Iowa for eighteen years. Julie and I began our family of three girls there, and it is one of the places we call home. But since it is not yet famous for that fact [ha ha], I'll point out five other things for which Iowa is proud. The last one ties directly into our discussion of HOME from these past several months.

"Be it ever so humble," Iowa is the home of President Herbert Hoover, first US president born west of the Mississippi. It is the “college home” of George Washington Carver. It’s the home of John Deere tractors (both manufacturing and use). It’s the home of the “Field of Dreams.” You know... the movie set with the baseball field beside a white farm house where the all the resurrected baseball players come out of the corn field for a shot at redemption—it still stands as the Iowa’s #1 tourist attraction. You think I’m joking, don’t you? I’ve run those bases, sat in the bleachers and stood on the porch in the background. The fifth thing, I’ll bet you didn’t know…

Iowa takes great pride in being the summer home of Antonín Dvořák, the Czech composer who lived in America from 1892 to 1895. Dvořák is best known for his New World Symphony, which he wrote in the spring of 1893. While putting the finishing touches on that work, he left New York by train and went to Spillville, Iowa, where some of his Czech relatives lived. He stayed the entire summer.

The entire New World Symphony is beautiful, but it's most recognizable strains are called "Goin' Home." If you listen to the background music of this clip from “Clear and Present Danger,” you’ll hear that "Largo" so often heard at military and State funerals.

It is commonly held that the melody (and later the gist of the lyrics) comes from an old African-American Spiritual with words similar to those below. It was Dvořák’s common practice to intertwine folk music in his work, and he had been working with Harry Burleigh, an expert of 19th Century spirituals. But the specific published lyrics of this song are credited to a student of Dvořák’s, William Arms Fisher, who said this in the flyleaf of the 1922 sheet music:

"The Largo... is the outpouring of Dvorak's own home-longing, with something of the loneliness of far-off prairie horizons, the faint memory of the red-man's bygone days, and a sense of the tragedy of the black-man as it sings in his "spirituals." Deeper still it is a moving expression of that nostalgia of the soul all human beings feel. That the lyric opening theme of the Largo should spontaneously suggest the words 'Goin' home, goin' home" is natural enough, and that the lines that follow the melody should take the form of a negro spiritual accords with the genesis of the symphony."

Those lyrics of "Goin' Home" use compelling earthly images to describe a home beyond this world. Here is the quintessential rendition by Paul Robeson. He was 60 years old when this was recorded live at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1958. I am moved by the longing in his voice.

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Goin' home, goin' home,

I'm jes' goin' home,

Quiet like, some still day,

I'm jes' goin' home.
It ain't far, Jes' close by,

Through an open door,

Work all done, care laid by,

Goin' t' fear no more.
Mother's there, 'spectin' me,

Father's waitin' too,

Lots o' folks gathered there,

All the friends I knew....

Nothin's lost, all is gain,

No more fret nor pain,

No more stumblin' on the way,

No more longin' for the day,

goin' to roam no more...

Mornin' star lights the way,

Restless dream all done,

Shadows gone, break of day,

Real life's jes' begun.
There's no break, there's no end,

Just a livin' on,

Wide awake with a smile,

Goin' on an' on.
Goin' home, goin' home,

I'm jes goin' home.

It's not far, Jes' close by

Through an open door,

I am goin' home.......
I am goin' home...home

About twenty years after that recording was made, a very young and shy James Taylor wrote a different song that speaks to the common need we have for a place to call home. As he introduced it, he said, “This is a song I wrote in Spain….I was homesick at the time—I didn’t have a home—but that doesn’t keep you from being homesick.”
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I hope I don't sound like a broken record as I continue writing about this feeling of "home." It's partly because we just enjoyed being home with family; partly because our middle daughter is leaving this week for college in Chicago. She has been commuting to college locally, but will now be further away until May. We're excited for her, but it comes on the heels of our oldest getting married last summer. Thank heavens, our youngest is still home. What a blessing she is. Keeps us feeling young to have a middle schooler.

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These feelings are compounded by the fact that I'll be going to Thailand in a week, and I know I will be thinking about "home" in new ways during that absence. I'm excited about the opportunity, which I'll write more about next weekend, but I also know that I'll miss my family while I'm gone and be eager to see them again when I return.
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There are countless other 20th Century songs about Goin' Home. Here are some you may know in the in various genre: Folk: "Homeward Bound" by Paul Simon (Here's the whole song 20 years later.) film musical:"I Want to Go Back to Michigan" by Irving Berlin sung by Judy Garland; Pop: "HOME" by Michael Buble; Rock: "I'm Goin' Home" by Chris Daughtry; 80's Country: "Back Home Again" by John Denver. Can you think of other songs that strum this "Going Home" chord?