De Wild Goose-Nation

"De Wild Goose-Nation" is an American song composed by blackface minstrel performer Dan Emmett.

"De Wild Goose-Nation"
Song
Composer(s)Dan Emmett[1]

The song is a parody (or possibly an adaptation) of "Gumbo Chaff", a blackface minstrel song dating to the 1830s, the music of which most closely resembles an 1844 version of that song.[2] Musicologist Hans Nathan sees similarities in the introduction of the song to the later "Dixie".[3]

Animal characters are the song's protagonists, tying "De Wild Goose-Nation" to similar tales in African American folklore.[4] 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."[5]

Emmett published the song through the Charles Keith Company in Boston in 1844. The title page claimed that the song had been sung "with unprecedented success . . . both in Europe and America";[6] nevertheless, analysis of playbills and newspaper clippings suggests that it saw only moderate popularity.[7] Emmett dedicated the song to "'Jim Crow' Rice".

Notes
  1. Alan Warren Friedman; Charles Rossman (2009). De-familiarizing Readings: Essays from the Austin Joyce Conference. Rodopi. pp. 39–. ISBN 90-420-2570-0.
  2. Mahar 20.
  3. Nathan 259.
  4. Mahar 233.
  5. Quoted in Nathan 262.
  6. Quoted in Mahar 373 note 37.
  7. Mahar 234.
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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.
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