De Wild Goose-Nation

"De Wild Goose-Nation" is an American song composed by blackface minstrel performer Dan Emmett.

The song is a parody (or possibly an adaptation) of "Gumbo Chaff", a blackface minstrel song dating to the 1830s; the music of most closely resembles an 1844 version of that song.[1] Musicologist Hans Nathan sees similarities in the introduction of the song to the later "Dixie".[2]

Animal characters are the song's protagonists, tying "De Wild Goose-Nation" to similar tales in African American folklore.[3] Despite the title, the phrase "wild goose nation" occurs only once, in the first verse. Some lyrics from the song are repeated in "Dixie": "De tarapin he thot it was time for to trabble / He screw aron his tail and begin to scratch grabble."[4]

Emmett published the song through the Charles Keith Company in Boston in 1844. The title page claimed that the song had been sung "with unprecedented success . . . both in Europe and America";[5] nevertheless, analysis of playbills and newspaper clippings suggests that it saw only moderate popularity.[6] Emmett dedicated the song to "'Jim Crow' Rice".

Notes

  1. ↑ Mahar 20.
  2. ↑ Nathan 259.
  3. ↑ Mahar 233.
  4. ↑ Quoted in Nathan 262.
  5. ↑ Quoted in Mahar 373 note 37.
  6. ↑ Mahar 234.

References

  • Mahar, William J. (1999). Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
  • Nathan, Hans (1962). Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
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