| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
III. 6. FARMERS OF THE SOUTH |
||
|
The South is singing country, dancing country, fiddling, guitar and banjo-picking country. The spirituals, the blues, ragtime, jazz, and "hill-billy" music came out of the South. It is the country of John Henry, Casey Jones, John Hardy, Stackerlee, Po? Laz'us, Pretty Polly, Wild Bill Jones, and the Boll Weevil. The land is wild and brooding and fertile and gay. Its singing reflects the feeling of the people about their land and its dark and splendid history.
Elsewhere in this volume we print the noble religious songs of the South, its love songs with their tricks and fancies, its tales of fierce brooding pasÂsion that brought lovers to their graves, its blues, its work songs, its dance tunes—all made, decorated, or saved up with love by the farm people of the South. Half of the songs in the book, therefore, might well be included in this section, but we have chosen only those songs which have to do with the economic problems of the sharecropper, the farm laborer, the migratory worker, or the small farmer, those which we could feel fairly sure were of folk origin. Here again the South shows itself a singing country, for it has produced songs of lasting strength and merit to tell some of the problems of its rural population.
Make your cotton and make your corn, And keef it all in the white folk's ham, But never you mind about the settlin' time, The white will bring you out behin'.
When white man git to worrying He ride in de air. When nigger git to worryin', Can't go nowhere.
* * *
A man heard a racket in his field. It was old man Boll Weevil whiffing Willie Boll Weevil 'cause he couldn't carry two rows of cotton at a time.
[ 279 ] |
||