ON THE TRAIL OF NEGRO FOLK-SONGS

A Collection Of Negro Traditional & Folk Songs with Sheet Music Lyrics & Commentaries - online book

	122	NEGRO FOLK-SONGS
	"The calinda was a dance of multitudes, a sort of vehement cotil­lion. The contortions of the encircling crowd were strange and ter­rible, the din was hideous. One calinda is still familiar to all Creole ears.' It has long been a vehicle for the white Creole's satire. For generations the man in municipal politics was fortunate who escaped entirely a lampooning set to this air." Clara Gottschalk Peterson gives a song, Calinda, also, in her col­lection, " Creole Songs from New Orleans in the Negro Dialect." The translation of her song deals with a Mister Mazireau who seemed like a bullfrog. The refrain was Dance, dance, Calinda dim sin! bourn! bourn! Cable's version is of a Judge Prebal who gave a ball and charged three dollars for the tickets. It ends, Dance Calinda, Bon-djoum! Dance Calinda, Bon Bon-djoum 1 In an article," Creole Slave Songs," in the Century Magazine, 1886, George W. Cable gives various other dance-songs of the Creole slaves. One shows the satiric nature appearing in many of the Creole songs, as distinctfrom those of the slaves of other sections. It mocks the free colored folk, those who were bound by certain fixed conventions of their class. The quadroon woman, called here milatraisse, could go to the ball, which was frequented by certain types of white men, and the black man, called here by a name signifiying crocodile, attended her to the ball to light her way by a lantern — there being no street lights then, and the free quadroon man could go to the ball only as a musician — a menial position in those days. MILATRAISSE COURRI DANS BAL Milatraisse courri dans bal, Cocodrie po'te fanal, Trouloulou! C'est pas zaffaire a tou, C'est pas zaffaire a tou, Trouloulou!