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Excerpt of Oh, Rockum Jubilee
Category: Game Song
Source:
Dorothy Scarborough “On The Trail
Of Negro Folk Songs” (Folklore Associates, Inc. Hatboro, Pennsylvania,
1963; p 190; originally published in 1925, Harvard University Press)
You call me dog and I don’t care.
Oh, my Lord!
You call me dog and I don’t care!
Oh, rockum Jubilee
You call me mule and I don’t care
Oh, my Lord.
You call me mule and I don’t care
Oh, rockum Jubilee.
You call me snake and I don’t care
Oh, my Lord!
You call me snake and I don’t care!
Oh, rockum Jubilee.
“Oh, Rockum Jubilee” is included
in
This is an example of a song originating in slavery or shortly thereafter
that served the purpose of building up the self-confidence of a oppressed
people. This is an open-ended
song that could include any negatively thought of living creature that the
person could come up with (“you call me pig and I don’t care”;
“you call me monkey and I don’t care, etc”.)
In that context, the song is very much like the saying that I grew
up with “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt
me. Note that this song shares the phrase “I don’t care with
another more widely known African American folksong “Jimmy Crack Corn
(or the Blue-Tail Fly).
The phrase “O Rockum Jubilee” may have been added to make
slavery owners think that this was a religious song, since “Jubilee”
was a referent for heaven. However
“Jubilee” and “The year of Jubilee” was also a referent for
freedom (i.e. heaven on earth), which means that all those who had ears
may not have known what they were hearing.
African Americans used
to call these old time songs “plays”.
I imagine that children would use their bodies and dramatic
expressions to act out the animal’s movement while they where singing.
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