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Little Johnny Brown
Category:
Game Song
Source:
©2001 Azizi Powell; adaptation of traditional African
American folk song
Now who do you
choose?
Johnny Brown
Who do you choose?
Johnny Brown
Johnny
Brown, Johnny Brown, Johnny Brown.
This is my adaptation of the old Southern African
American ring game called “Little Johnny Brown”.
The main words to the orignal game song were “Little Johnny
Brown, lay your comfort down”. A
“comfort” is a blanket. Even
today, another word for a large blanket is “comforter”.
In the original game boys and girls played together.
A boy {called Johnny Brown regardless of his real name} would stand
in the center of the circle and pretend to fold up his blanket.
He would then show off a dance step or movement {show me your
motion}, and give the blanket to his “lover” (one of the girls making
up the circle). The girl then
becomes the next person in the middle (“Jenny Brown”?)
I changed the words of this song because nowadays boys and girls over age
6 years rarely play circle games together.
And if they did, they wouldn’t want to tell everyone which girl
or boy they liked. My
adaptation follows the traditional format of the “show me your motion”
songs and uses the more modern style of selecting the middle person at
random.
“Show me your motion” is a common feature of African American game
songs. When a person does a
dance or movement, the rest of the group, try to exactly imitate him or
her. All other people who
become the center person try to think up different dance steps or
movements than the ones that were done by other people.
When the group sings “Who do you choose, the middle person covers
his or her eyes, and turns around in the center of the circle with his or
her eyes covered by one hand while the other hands points to people in the
circle. Whoever the center
person is pointing to at the end of the song becomes the new center person
(in this song “Johnny Brown or Jenny Brown).
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