Margaret Bonds - "Troubled Water" for String Ensemble

 
"Troubled Water" by the African-American composer Margaret Bonds is based on the spiritual "Wade in the Water," one of many coded songs used by Harriet Tubman to help the enslaved escape. As the slave masters and their dogs approach, the slaves are told to get off the trail into the water so dogs are unable to follow a scent trail.
In this masterfully done composition, Bonds presents increasingly complex variations of the refrain of the spiritual "Wade in the Water." Central to the composition is the phrase, "God's a gonna trouble the water", the last line of the refrain as well as of each verse.