Additional Notes:

No Notes Available

Backstory:

  Doors of No Return is the port in Ghana from which slaves were shipped to the New World.                                                                                                                                                                                

Lyrics:

                                                  

V1
The land where bones are white and rotten
Where the sea still stirs and churns
Like the ghosts of chains and cotton 
There stands the Doors of No Return 


Skin is black and souls are blackened 
Like the stories never told
Sails taught and ropes are slackened 
Journey off to the New World 


CH
Sing the song, children
Bear your burden to the Father
Then sing some more, children
How God’s gonna trouble the water

Oh, yeah, sing my children
How God’s gonna trouble the water
Then sing again, louder
Bear your burden to the Father

V2
Rows of people tied and shackled 
The sun is cruel like a whip on skin
God is watching, sad and baffled 
How we are sold by kith and kin

Mother’s bought, but not her child 
Who watched her wagon disappear 
Lives disgraced and hopes defiled
By the whip of an overseer 


CH
Sing the song, children
Bear your burden to the Father
Then sing some more, children
How God’s gonna trouble the water

Oh, yeah, sing my children
How God’s gonna trouble the water
Then sing again, louder
Bear your burden to the Father


BRIDGE 
Lost and forgotten 
Their innocent dreams 
The country they’re brought in 
Would be the land of the free

CH
Sing the song, children
Bear your burden to the Father
Then sing some more, children
How God’s gonna trouble the water

Oh, yeah, sing my children
How God’s gonna trouble the water
Then sing again, louder
Bear your burden to the Father



This is the chorus of an actual song slaves sang on cotton fields: 

Wade in the water
Wade in the water, children
Wade in the water
God's gonna trouble the water.

Wade in the water
Wade in the water, children
Wade in the water
God's gonna trouble the water.