"De Wild Goose-Nation" is an
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
song
A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetit ...
composed by
blackface minstrel
A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. It originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer ...
performer
Dan Emmett
Daniel Decatur Emmett (October 29, 1815June 28, 1904) was an American songwriter, entertainer, and founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition, the Virginia Minstrels. He is most remembered as the composer of the song "Dixie ...
.
The song is a
parody
A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its sub ...
(or possibly an
adaptation) of "
Gumbo Chaff
"Gumbo Chaff", also spelled "Gombo Chaff", is an American song, first performed in the early 1830s. It was part of the repertoire of early blackface performers, including Thomas D. Rice and George Washington Dixon.
The title character was one ...
", a blackface minstrel song dating to the 1830s, the music of which most closely resembles an 1844 version of that song.
Musicologist
Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some m ...
Hans Nathan sees similarities in the introduction of the song to the later "
Dixie
Dixie, also known as Dixieland or Dixie's Land, is a nickname for all or part of the Southern United States. While there is no official definition of this region (and the included areas shift over the years), or the extent of the area it cover ...
".
Animal characters are the song's protagonists, tying "De Wild Goose-Nation" to similar tales in
African American folklore. 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."
Emmett published the song through the Charles Keith Company in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
in 1844. The title page claimed that the song had been sung "with unprecedented success . . . both in Europe and America"; 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
Songs written by Dan Emmett
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