George Cables: Goin' Home

The 2nd-movement tune from Dvo?ák's New World Symphony (1893) sounds so American that many listeners mistake it for a Negro spiritual. The Czech composer, however, having written it in New York, insisted his themes were original, merely "embodying the peculiarities" of indigenous music. A hundred years later, George Cables demonstrates that "Goin' Home" had become as American as baseball (from Britain and Ireland), hot dogs (Vienna/Frankfurt), apple pie (England) and Chevrolet (Swiss immigrant). In any case, quoting Ellington's "I Got It Bad," Cables gently reminds us that, be it ever so humble, our most authentically American indigenous peculiarity is jazz.