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De Wild Goose-Nation
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Wikipedia article
"'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 which most closely resembles an 1844 version of that song.Mahar 20. Musicologist Hans Nathan sees similarities in the introduction of the song to the later "Dixie".Nathan 259.
Animal characters are the song's protagonists, tying "De Wild Goose-Nation" to similar tales in African American folklore.Mahar 233. 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."Quoted in Nathan 262.
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";Quoted in Mahar 373 note 37. nevertheless, analysis of playbills and newspaper clippings suggests that it saw only moderate popularity.Mahar 234. Emmett dedicated the song to "'Jim Crow' Rice".
Notes
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.
Wild Goose-Nation, De
Wild Goose-Nation, De
Category:Songs written by Dan Emmett
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