Minstrel Songs and their lyrics

The song "My Old Kentucky Home" by Stephen Foster begins with the lines

The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home,
'Tis summer, the darkies are gay,...(12)

Here is an excerpt from the plantation melody "Carry me back to old Virginny":

There's where I labored so hard for old massa,
Day after day in the field of yellow corn.
No place on earth do I love more sincerely.(13)

In these songs the blacks were portrayed as always happy and singing. They love their slave owners and are totally devoted to them even if they have to work hard for them. The whole life on the Southern plantations is romanticized. A typical stereotype of these lyrics is the wandering Negro who longs to be back where he ‘belongs':

"Old folks at home”:

All up and down the whole creation,
Sadly I roam,
Still longing for the old plantation,
And for the old folks at home.(14)

With songs like these and the persisting notion that the blacks like to be slaves, the minstrels gave the white audience a clear conscience and a good excuse not to think about the fate of the oppressed Negroes.

Although in the last decades of the nineteenth century the minstrel show slowly disappeared many of the most famous songs did not. But they gradually were taken out of the minstrel context. During the Civil War some songs that were originally composed for and performed in minstrel shows were given new lyrics and used as ,battle cries' . "Dixie's Land" could be mentioned here; a song that was transformed into the national anthem of the Confederacy. But most of the tunes turned into so-called traditionals, meaning all-American folk songs. During this process the pseudo Negro dialect and allusions to the minstrel context were often replaced by more neutral expressions. Darkie was replaced by fellow, words like massa and mistress were omitted. The spelling was also adjusted to today's standards, like in "Swanee River":

Way down upon de Swanee Ribber, far, far away,
Dere's wha my heart is turning ebber,...(15) --> Way down upon the Swanee River, far, far away,
There's where my heart is turning ever,...(16)

As an example of two different versions of a complete song I chose "Carry me back to old Virginny" by James Bland:

Original version:

1. Carry me back to old Virginny.
There's where the cotton and the corn and 'tatoes grow,
There's where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,
There's where the old darkey's heart am longed to go.
There's where I labored so hard for old massa
Day after day in the field of yellow corn,
No place on earth do I love more sincerely
Than old Virginny, the state where I was born.
 

2. Carry me back to old Virginny,
There let me live, till I whither and decay,
Long by the old dismal swamp have I wandered,
There's where the old darkey's life will pass away.
Massa and missis have long gone before me,
Soon will we meet on that bright and golden shore,
There we'll be happy and free from all sorrow,
There's where we'll meet and we'll never part no more.(17)
 

Arrangement von Cavanough-Stanton:

1. Carry me back to old Virginny.
There's where the cotton and the corn and 'tatoes grow,
There's where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,
There's where the old folks are longing to go.
There's where I labored so hard all my lifetime,
Day after day in the field of yellow corn,
No place on earth do I love more sincerely
Than old Virginny, the state where I was born.
 

2. Carry me back to old Virginny,
There let me live till I whither and decay,
Long by the old dismal swamp have I wandered,
There's where this old one's life will pass away.
My friend and my folks have long gone before me,
Soon will we meet on that bright and golden shore,
There we'll be happy and free from all sorrow,
There's where we'll meet and we'll never part no more.(18)

Over the last decades some songs even became official state songs. "My Old Kentucky Home" and "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" are two of them. This shows how forgotten their origins are today.

(12) Jackson, Richard (ed.). Popular Songs of Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1976, p.135.
(13) Ibid., p. 45.
(14) Ibid., p. 165.
(15) Ibid., p. 164
(16) Buchner, Gerhard (Hg.). Songs aus Amerika. München, Wien, Hollywood/Florida: Franz Schneider Verlag, 1980, p. 35.
(17) Jackson, pp. 43-46.
(18) Haufrecht, H. (Hg.). FolkSing. New York: Hollis Music Inc. Für Deutschland: Essex Musikvertrieb, Köln, ohne Jahreszahl, p. 69.

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