“There appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire… and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.”

In the 1860s, Choctaw freedmen and father-daughter duo Wallace and Minerva Willis shaped the story of a prophet’s living ascension to Heaven into a song.

From Oklahoma’s Red River, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” swept the globe, fueled by the Fisk Jubilee Singers‘ 1873 bespoke performance to England’s Queen Victoria. In what might be America’s very first “crossover hit,” its roots and rise have been preserved by the Library of Congress, Recording Industry Association of America, the National Endowment for the Arts, AND the Smithsonian.

At face value, the song carries a poignance in inspiration and performance that speaks to our humanity, our frailty, and our hope.

But its real cultural and historical significance lies in its verses eventually encoded with a deeper meaning — one that signaled the arrival of HARRIET and her Underground Railroad carrying the enslaved from the deep South.

Over 100 years later, Parliament knew EXACTLY what they were doing bringing their own choir and congregation of bold, beautiful and bizarre Black people to a live stage.

With “Swing Down, Sweet Chariot,” they transcended space and time, transforming the hope that Black earthly suffering might end into a post-Civil Rights galactic anthem that claimed the whole universe on their behalf.

It’s one of many songs that made Parliament a face of “Afro-futurism,” the movement that centers Black experiences, aesthetics, and liberation in science (-fiction), technology, fantasy and the distant future.

In a reality where colonizers and enslavers enacted laws against reading, writing, dancing, worship, clothing, gathering and so many of the experiences that remind us of our humanity, Afro-futurism carves out a safe space for one thing that couldn’t be beaten, raped, pillaged and legislated out of us: IMAGINATION.

Parliament epitomized Afro-futurism with style and substance. Vibrant colors, big personalities, and a whole collective of people with jaw-dropping vocal and instrumental talent infused the band with an essence that even “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” couldn’t claim: undeniable, inimitable Blackness.

The “Swing Down, Sweet Chariot” live performance is riddled with moments that Blackness is celebrated, but perhaps the most significant is when their collective voices, including the call-and-response crowd participation, eventually call down an ACTUAL fiery chariot of a mothership from the rafters. That’s what you call a signature moment.

Carl Sagan once poetically described how we are all made of star dust.

Listen to Parliament’s “Swing Down, Sweet Chariot” and you’ll hear how nearly 5 centuries of oppression turned some of us into diamonds.

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