Let My People Go

"Let My People Go!" is a line from (and alternate name of) the spiritual "Go Down Moses".

Let My People Go may also refer to:

Film

Music

My People

My People may refer to:

Let There Be Rock

Let There Be Rock is an album by Australian hard rock band AC/DC. It was the band's third internationally released studio album and the fourth to be released in Australia. All songs were written by Angus Young, Malcolm Young and Bon Scott. It was originally released on 21 March 1977 in Australia on the Albert Productions label. A modified international edition was released on 25 July 1977 on Atlantic Records.

Recording

By 1977, AC/DC had become extremely successful in their native Australia and had also achieved a degree of popularity in the U.K. and Europe, largely on the strength of their pulverizing live show. However, Atlantic Records in the United States had rejected the band's third album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, feeling the production was not up to par, and the band, which had yet to tour America, returned to Albert Studios in Sydney to record another album. From the beginning, it appears they intended to make a statement, with guitarist Angus Young telling VH1's Behind the Music in 2000, "Me and Malcolm said, 'Well, we really want a lot of guitars,' you know? Big guitars." The band's first album released in Australia, High Voltage, had contained glam-rock elements, while their ensuing releases had been recorded piecemeal as the group toured incessantly and were also altered for international release. Let There Be Rock, on the other hand, was recorded in one go and represented a major evolution in the band's sound, with many critics and fans citing it as the first true AC/DC album; in his book Highway to Hell: The Life and Times of AC/DC Legend Bon Scott, author Clinton Walker observes, "Let There Be Rock was the first fully rounded AC/DC album. The band had finally found itself."

Go Down Moses

"Go Down Moses" is an American Negro spiritual. It describes events in the Old Testament of the Bible, specifically Exodus 8:1: "And the LORD spake unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Let my people go, that they may serve me", in which God commands Moses to demand the release of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. The opening verse as published by the Jubilee Singers in 1872:

When Israel was in Egypt's land:
Let my people go,
Oppress'd so hard they could not stand,
Let my People go.

Refrain:
Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt's land,
Tell old Pharaoh,
Let my people go.

In the song "Israel" represents the African-American slaves while "Egypt" and "Pharaoh" represent the slavemaster.

Going "down" to Egypt is derived from the Biblical origin; Moses was up on the mountain of God when God commanded him to go to Egypt (Exodus 3:1-12). Also, the Bible generally recognizes Egypt as being at a lower altitude than Jerusalem and other core areas of Israelite territory; thus, going to Egypt means going "down" while going away from Egypt is "up". In the context of American slavery, this ancient sense of "down" converged with the concept of "down the river" (the Mississippi), where slaves' conditions were notoriously worse, a situation which left the idiom "sell [someone] down the river" in present-day English.

People

A people is a plurality of persons considered as a whole, as is the case with an ethnic group or nation. Collectively, for example, the contemporary Frisians and Danes are two related Germanic peoples, while various Middle Eastern ethnic groups are often linguistically categorized as the Semitic people. See the list of contemporary ethnic groups for more examples.

In politics

Various republics govern, or claim to govern, in the name of the people. Both the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire used the Latin term Senatus Populusque Romanus, (the Senate and People of Rome). This term was fixed to Roman legionary standards, and even after the Roman Emperors achieved a state of total personal autarchy, they continued to wield their power in the name of the Senate and People of Rome.

A People's Republic is typically a Marxist or socialist one-party state that claims to govern on behalf of the people. Populism is another umbrella term for various political tendencies that claim to represent the people, usually with an implication that they serve the common people instead of the elite.