in the second stanza (“If you get there before I do”) the audience is transformed into a creative device that serves to heighten the emotional urgency of the tune. The song was originally intended to be sung in a call-and-response, a format that draws from the heritage of African styles of music and is widely used in African-American churches today. A leader sings the differentiated lines, and the congregation replies “Coming for to carry me home” after each. This style of performing the spiritual can be heard in the existing recordings of the Fisk Jubilee Singers performing the tune. This call-and-response performance style is the most common form of spiritual. The simple, repetitive nature of the song, along with the fact that it was commonly performed without instrumental accompaniment, meant that spontaneous shifts in tempo, pitch, and emphasis were commonly made, leading the song in new and exciting directions intended to unify congregants with the Holy Spirit. Like other spirituals, “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” has been thought to contain coded meanings not immediately apparent to all listeners. American historian Charshee Charlotte Lawrence McIntyre argues that many spirituals make use of “metonymic devices,” or metaphors that have encoded meanings. She claims that throughout many traditional spirituals several recurring figures always carry a metonymic double meaning. These double meanings allowed enslaved people to safely communicate messages of hope, freedom, and specific plans for escape to one another under the watchful gaze of their captors. The double meanings encoded in “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” are believed to be the Jordan River as representative of the first step to freedom from slavery, “home” as Africa, and Jesus as anyone who helps bring the enslaved to freedom. However, a definitive categorization of any such figures is impossible to make. Film and television appearances The song has frequently been used in films and television. 1931: Dirigible – sung by Clarence Muse 1936: Dimples – hummed by the Hall Johnson Choir 1936: The Lonely Trail – sung by a choir 1938: Everybody Sing – swing version sung by Judy Garland in blackface at an audition, with special lyrics. 1938: Room Service – sung by the Marx Brothers 1943: Dixie – sung by Bing Crosby and a chorus 1948: A Date with Judy 1950: Young Man with a Horn – sung by a chorus 1961: The Alvin Show – sung during one of the show's musical segments 1971: