Rivers of Babylon
"Rivers of Babylon" is a Rastafari song written and recorded by Brent Dowe and Trevor McNaughton of the Jamaican reggae group The Melodians in 1970. The lyrics are adapted from the texts of Psalms 19 and 137 in the Hebrew Bible. The Melodians' original version of the song appeared on the soundtrack album for the 1972 movie The Harder They Come, which made it internationally known.
This article is about the song. For other uses, see Rivers of Babylon (disambiguation).The song was re-popularized in Europe by the 1978 Boney M. cover version, which was awarded a platinum disc and is one of the top-ten, all-time best-selling singles in the UK. The B-side of the single, "Brown Girl in the Ring", also became a hit.
Melodians version[edit]
After its release in 1970, the song quickly became well known in Jamaica. According to Brent Dowe, the song was initially banned by the Jamaican government because "its overt Rastafarian references ('King Alpha' and 'O Far-I') were considered subversive and potentially inflammatory".[4] Leslie Kong, the group's producer, attacked the government for banning a song with words taken almost entirely from the Bible, stating that the Psalms had been "sung by Jamaican Christians since time immemorial".[4] The government lifted the ban. After that, it took only three weeks to become a number-one hit in the Jamaican charts.[4]
It reached an international audience thanks to the soundtrack album of the 1972 film The Harder They Come, which is credited with having "brought reggae to the world".[5] The song was later used in the 1999 Nicolas Cage movie Bringing Out the Dead and the 2010 Philip Seymour Hoffman film Jack Goes Boating.The song is also featured in Season 3 - Episode 2 of the TV series Outer Banks.
"Rivers of Babylon"
1978
4:21
- Brent Dowe
- Trevor McNaughton
- Frank Farian
- Reyam
1988