More Than a Songwriting Motif: Rivers in Songwriting
Rivers are one of my favorite nature motifs used in songwriting. Rivers are of the earth, you can find them in place names, in love songs, in the history of industrial labor and war. They are metaphorically used in parable and symbolically used in spirituality and religion. Rivers are a part of the United States culture and worthy of respect beyond what they can be used for.
Fall River, where I live, has the Quequechan River. In my exploration of this motif, I wanted to get some local historical context. Quequechan approximately translates from Wampanoag to English as “Falling-Water”. The river was given its name by the Wampanoag people of the land. It was named Quequechan because of the series of granite ledges that the stream once flowed over and from there out into the bay. The land that is now called Fall River remained unsettled by colonizers until 1675. The start of Kings Philip’s War led to the genocide of the Wampanoag people that lived in the area. After which point the land was claimed by Matthew Boomer who had bought the land prior to the genocide. Then he promptly settled on the land at the end of the war. Matthew Boomer had claimed the land through a trade exchange with Wamsutta, the son of a Chief Massasoit. Boomer gave Wamsutta, “twenty coats, two rugs, two iron pots, two kettles and one little kettle, eight pairs of shoes, six pairs of stockings, one dozen hoes, one dozen hatchets, two yards of broadcloth, and a debt owed to John Barnes of Plymouth.” The exchange between Wamsutta to Boomer set the stage for the formation of Freetown. In time the town would be split becoming Fallriver and eventually the landowners settled on the name Fall River.
Today, if you go to Fall River you’ll find the Quequechan River Rail trail. The trail is over 2 miles long and covers the length of what is left of the placid river. In the springtime there are beautiful wildflowers that line the path. Lilypad leaves sway gently on the surface as frogs skitter on the shore and turtles bubble underneath the shallow water. I’ve seen people biking, running, walking, or simply enjoying the views from the benches along the trail. It’s a great place to spend time on a bright breezy day before the height of the summer heat. The news may lead some to believe that the trail is unsafe due to houseless people living in encampments, but I’ve never had problem in my ten years here. The worst I’ve come across is a rogue gaggle of Canada Geese blocking the path (watch your feet for poop).
The quiet river connects to South Watuppa Pond, and the trail ends at the exit to Westport. The South Watuppa Pond connects to the Taunton River, then to Mount Hope Bay and out to sea. In the cluster of land in the oceans of the South Coast of Massachusetts, there are beautiful beach towns and islands like Newport, Block Island, Martha’s Vineyard, etc. Like Fall River, those places were once native land.
The way we sing about rivers and use their names is often reverential or romantic as it is often that they lead from one beautiful place to another. But if the rivers could sing songs about us, I wonder what they would sing about?
If you’re interested reading some books about kinship with the earth I recommend the 5 series collection, “Kinship: Belonging in A World of Relations” (2021) by the Center for Humans and Nature. Also, “Should Trees Have Standing: Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects Southern California Law Review 45 (1972) by Christopher D. Stone. I got them through Interlibrary Loan or Comcat at my local library.
Songwriting exercise!
Write a song from the perspective of a river.
Work Cited
Boss, Judith A. “Fall River, a Pictorial History”. Page 11-12. The Donning Company/Publishers. Virginia. (1982)