User:Clark Kimberling

Folk Music of Jamaica
A notable year in the history of Jamaican music was 1907, when Walter Jekyll's Jamaican Song and Story'' was first published. The Contentsof this book include four parts entitled Annancy Stories, Digging Sings, Ring Tunes, and Dancing Tunes. Each part has an introduction, songs, stories, and melodies.

Part 1: Annancy stories, includes 51 items, such as the story and melody "Leah and Tiger" (item 36, pages 108-9). The heading refers to a legendary figure, Annancy, or the Ashanti word for spider.  Annancy stories and certain musical characteristics originated in West Africa.

Part 2: Digging sings, includes 37 items, such as The one shirt I have" (item 58, page 164). The heading refers to the digging of holes for the planting of yams. "Nothing more joyous can be imagined," writes Jekyll, "than a good 'digging-sing' from twenty throats, with the pickers—so they call their pickaxes—falling in regular beat." Digging sings included songs sung during many kinds of labor. A feature of several digging sings is the bobbin. Jekyll explains, "One man starts or 'raises' the tune and the others come in with the 'bobbin,' the short refrain..." In the song Miss Nancy Ray, for example, the bobbin is "Oh hurrah boys!" Bobbins resemble and perhaps stemmed from a common manner of singing of work songs in Africa.

Part 3: Ring tunes, includes 28 items, such as "Ring a diamond" (item 92, page 194). These tunes were sung by boys and girls holding hands to form a ring.

Part 4: Dancing tunes, includes 80 items, such as "Fan me, soldierman" (item 125, page 223) and Me carry me akee a Linstead market" (item 121, pp. 219-220).

During the 1970's, Oxford University Press published six collections of Jamaican folks songs arranged and annotated by Dr. Olive Lewin. Her book, Rock It Come Over: the Folk Music of Jamaica, describes Jekyll's 1907 book as "very well researched," but she gives examples of occasional errors. She concludes that "although Jekyll's interest extended beyond music to Jamaican folklore, it was by his considerable knowledge as a musician that he made the most valuable contribution to this all too neglected field of scholarship."

In her book Forty Folk Songs of Jamaica, Lewin classifies the songs into eleven groups: Bruckins, Jankunnu, Kumina, Maroon, Mento, Nagos, Rasta (Rastafarian), Revival, (Set-Up; Gerreh), Tambo, and Worksongs. Of these, mento is by far the most common. However, much of mento is of relatively recent origin and should be classified as popular music rather than folk. Linkages from folk music to mento are described in Daniel T. Neely's dissertation, Mento, Jamaica's Original Music: Development, Tourism and the Nationalist Frame (New York University, 2007).

Among the best known Jamaican folk songs are Day-O (The Banana Boat Song), Jamaica Farewell (Iron Bar), and Linstead Market. The first two of these were popularized by Harry Belafonte. The third has come a long way since its appearance among Jekyll's 108 Jamaican folk songs. Not only has Linstead Market been arranged for solo voice and piano and for performance by choirs, but also, it was arranged for congregational singing in 1975 and now appears in at least five hymnals.

Cultural Setting and Congo Square
In America's Music (2nd edition, p. 302-3), [] Gilbert Chase describes the cultural setting in which Creole folk music developed. In 1803 the United Stated purchased the Louisiana Territory, including New Orleans, from France, and in 1809 and 1810, "more than ten thousand refugees from the West Indies arrived in New Orleans, most originally from [French-speaking Haiti]. Of these, about three thousand were free Negroes." At the time of Louis Moreau Gottschalk's birth in 1829, 'Caribbean' was "perhaps the best word to describe the musical atmosphere of New Orleans."

Central to Creole musical activities was Place Congo (in English: [Congo Square]). The much quoted 1886 article by [George Washington Cable] offers this description:

The booming of African drums and blast of huge wooden horns called to the gathering... . The drums were very long, hollowed, often from a single piece of wood, open at one end and having a sheep or goat skin stretched across the other... .  The smaller drum was often made from a joint or two of very large bamboo...and this is said to be the origin of its name; for it was called the Bamboula.

Cable then describes a variety of instruments used at Congo Square, including gourds, triangles, jew's-harps, jawbones, and "the grand instrument at last," the four-stringed banjo. The bamboula, or "bamboo-drum", accompanied the bamboula dance and bamboula songs. Chase writes, "For Cable, the bamboula represented 'a frightful triumph of body over the mind,' and 'Only the music deserved to survive, and does survive...'"

Among other Creole dances mentioned by Chase (p. 312) are the babouilee, the cata (or chacta), the counjaille (or counjai), the voudou, the calinda, and the congo. "Perhaps the most widespread of all was the calinda..." The melody "Michié Préval," for example, was sung to the calinda. In Spanish, the name of this dance is calenda.

Songs Sung at Good Hope Plantation, St. Charles Parish
Songs numbered 130-136 in Slave Songs of the United States, according to a note on page 113,

were obtained from a lady who heard them sung, before the war, on the "Good Hope" plantation, St. Charles Parish, Louisiana... Four of these songs, Nos. 130, 131, 132, and 133, were sung to a simple dance, a sort of minuet, called the Coonjai; the name and the dance are probably both of African origin. When the Coonjai is danced, the music is furnished by an orchestra of singers, the leader of whom—a man selected both for the quality of his voice and for his skill in improvising—sustains the solo part, while the others afford him an opportunity, as they shout in chorus, for inventing some neat verse to compliment some lovely danseuse, or celebrate the deeds of some plantation hero. The dancers themselves never sing...and the usual musical accompaniment, besides that of the singers, is that furnished by a skilful performer on the barrel-head-drum, the jaw-bone and key, or some other rude instrument.

...It will be noticed that all these songs are "seculars" [not spirituals]; and that while the words of most of them are of very litle account, the music is as peculiar, as interesting, and, in the case of two or three of them, as difficult to write down, or to sing correctly, as any [of the 129 songs] that have preceded them.

The words "obtained from a lady who heard them sung" suggest that the songs were written down by someone, perhaps the lady herself, but certainly someone adept at music notation who was able to understand and write down the patois. It seems likely that she or he was a guest or a member of the La Branche family, who resided at the plantation until 1859, shortly after which the plantation was devastated by flood. This family included United States chargé d'affaires to Texas and two speakers of the Louisiana House of Representatives, Alcée Louis La Branche.

We may never know the identity of the person who wrote down the seven Creole folk songs as sung at Good Hope Plantation, but it is noteworthy that Good Hope (town), Good Hope Floodwall, Good Hope Oil and Gas Field, Bayou La Branche, and, especially, La Branche Wetlands are today well known names in St. Charles Parish, where the seven songs were once sung.

Gottschalk's Use of Creole Melodies
Louis Moreau Gottschalk, widely acknowledged as America's foremost concert artist of the ninetenth century, was born in New Orleans in 1829. Perone's bio-bibliography lists hundreds of Gottschalk's compositions. Among them are three solo piano works based on Creole melodies:

Bamboula, danse des nègres, based on "Musieu Bainjo" and "Tan Patate-là Tcuite"

La Savane, ballad crèole, based on "Lolotte"

Le Bananier, chanson nègre, based on "En Avant, Grenadiers," which like other Creole folk melodies, was also a popular French song

In America's Music (revised third edition, page 290), Chase writes: Le Bananier was one of the three pieces based on Creole tunes that had a tremendous success in Europe and that I have called the "Louisiana Trilogy." [The other two are Bamboula and La Savane.] All three were composed between 1844 and 1846, when Gottschalk was still a teenager... . The pieces that created the greatest sensation was Bamboula.

Chase apparently overlooked a fourth Creole melody used by Gottschalk. In her 1902 compilation, Gottschalk's sister arranged "Po' Pitie Mamzé Zizi," and included a footnote: "L. M. Gottschalk used this melody for his piece entitled 'Mancenillier', [full name Le Mancenillier, sérénade]."

Regarding "Misieu Bainjo," used in Gottschalk's Bamboula, the editors of Slave Songs write "...the attempt of some enterprising negro to write a French song; he is certainly to be congratulated on his success." The song has been published in more than a dozen collections prior to 1963, listed by the Archive of Folk Culture, Library of Congress.

The Louisiana Lady
During the 1930s and 1940s, Camille Nickerson (1888-1982) performed Creole folk music professionally as "The Louisiana Lady." During an interview with Doris E. McGinty, Professor Nickerson told of her first performance at a parish in New Iberia. "I was dressed in Creole costume and sang for about an hour and a half, and was very well received. Now this was a white audience; such a thing was unheard of in Louisiana, especially in the rural section such as this was.  The enthusiasm of the audience showed me what an impact the Creole song could have."

= Black Creole Music =

"Black Creole music," often reduced to "Creole music," designates a genre found in connection with Cajun music, zydeco, and swamp pop. The beginnings of this genre are associated with accordionist Amédé Ardoin (1896-1941), who, in the early 1930s, made influential recordings with Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee.

Subsequent developments, in which black Creole and Cajun styles became increasingly inseparable, are covered at Contemporary Louisiana Cajun, Creole and Zydeco Musicians. Among the many pages, under the auspices of Louisiana State University Eunice, are tributes to black Creole musicians Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin (1915-2007) and Boozoo Chavis (1930-2001).

= External Links =

Afro-American Folksongs - online book. Chapters IX, X, XI concentrate on Louisiana Creole music, dance, and patois, with comparisons to those of Martinique.

Contemporary Louisiana Cajun, Creole and Zydeco Musicians, from Louisiana State University Eunice.

Creole Songs Cable Sang, George Washington Cable's article in The Century Magazine, February 1886.

Historical Notes for African-American and Jamaican Melodies

Slave Songs of the United States. The Creole folk songs, numbered 130-136, can be viewed here as melodies with Creole lyrics.

Zydeco in The Handbook of Texas.

= References =

William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, compilers, Slave Songs of the United States, A. Simpson & Co., New York, 1867.

Shane K. Bernard, Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm and Blues, University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, Mississippi, 1996. (Mentions black Creole music, but not Creole folk songs.)

Florence E. Borders, "Researching Creole and Cajun Musics in New Orleans," Black Music Research Journal, vol. 8, no. 1 (1988) 15-31.

George W. Cable, "The Dance in Place Congo," Century Magazine vol. 31, Feb., 1886, pp. 517-532.

Gilbert Chase, America's Music, from the Pilgrims to the Present, revised second edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1966.

Gilbert Chase, America's Music, from the Pilgrims to the Present, revised third, University of Illinois Press, 1987.

Maud Cuney-Hare, arranger, Six Creole Folk-Songs, Fischer, New York, 1921.

Henry Edward Krehbiel,  Afro-American Folksongs, G. Schirmer, New York, 1915.

Doris E. McGinty and Camille Nickerson, "The Louisiana Lady," The Black Perspective in Music, vo. 7, no. 1 (Spring, 1979) 81-94.

Mina Monroe, Bayou Ballads: Twelve Folk-Songs from Louisiana, G. Schirmer, New York, 1921.

Camille Nickerson, Africo-Creole Music in Louisiana; a thesis on the plantation songs created by the Creole negroes of Louisiana, Oberlin College, 1932.

James E. Perone, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 2002.

Clara Gottschalk Peterson, arranger, Creole Songs from New Orleans in the Negro-Dialect, L. Grunewald, New Orleans, 1902.

Dorothy Scarborough, On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs, Harvard University Press, 1925.

S. Frederick Starr, ''Bamboula! The Life and Times of Louis Moreau Gottschalk,'' Oxford University Press, 2000.

Ching Veillon, Creole Music Man: Bois Sec Ardoin, Xlibris, 2003.

Henri Wehrmann, Creole Songs of the Deep South, New Orleans, 1946.

Irène Thérèse Whitfield, compiler, "Creole Folk Songs," Chapter 6 in Louisiana French Folk Songs, Louisiana State University Press, 1939.