“Paul and Silas” is an African American spiritual built on a story from the New Testament Book of Acts. The apostle Paul and his companion Silas, jailed in Philippi, spend the night praying and singing — and an earthquake shakes the prison, throws open the doors, and loosens every prisoner’s chains.
The song is old, reaching back into the nineteenth-century spiritual tradition, and like most spirituals it has no single author. Its image of imprisonment broken by faith carried a powerful double meaning, and the song circulated widely through gospel and folk singing well before it reached records.
The song passed into bluegrass gospel, where its driving rhythm suited a hard, rolling treatment.
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