An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 6 | BLACK, WHITES, AND THE MINSTREL STAGE 141

ascending fi gure that starts the chorus (“Gwine to run all night”). The sheet

music presents the song with an accompaniment for piano, making it suitable

for home performance, but the written vocal part refl ects minstrel stage prac-

tice: the “doo-dah!” interjections in the verses are indicated to be sung by the

group, creating a call-and-response texture characteristic of African American

music, while the chorus is written in four-part vocal harmony, refl ecting the

informal vocal harmonizing of groups like the Virginia Minstrels. Even with

these features, the song also works well as a vocal solo, exhibiting the fl exibility

that helped a song attain widespread popularity in antebellum America.

Though the differences between “De Boatmen’s Dance” and “De Camptown

Races” might be understood as a matter of different composing styles, they also

refl ect changes in minstrelsy between 1843 and 1850. “De Boatmen’s Dance” rep-

resented the dominant voice of early minstrelsy: the black mask, linked with

tough, unlyrical, folklike music, that invited white listeners to mock genteel

social customs with fi erce intensity. In the next few years, however, blackface

minstrels vastly increased their audience, in part by broadening their musical

repertory. Rip-roaring comic songs like “Miss Lucy Long” and “Old Dan Tucker”

were still sung, but so were sad songs, love songs, sentimental songs, and even

opera parodies. (The opera parodies mentioned in chapter 5, The Roof Scram-

bler and Fried Shots, were both blackface burlesques.) By midcentury the noisy,

impromptu entertainments cooked up by Dan Emmett and the Virginia Min-

strels were becoming a thing of the past. Moving into the center of American

show business, minstrelsy evolved toward a more restrained kind of spectacle.

K Stephen C. Foster

(1826–1864), born near

Pittsburgh on July 4, the

nation’s fi ftieth anniversary,

wrote more songs that won

enduring popularity than any

other American songwriter of

the nineteenth century.

timing section text comments

1:19 interlude Shortened return of introduction.

1:22 verse 4 and

chorus

See dem fl yin’ on a ten mile heat,

Doo-dah doo-dah!

Round de race track, den repeat,

Oh, doo-dah-day!

I win my money on de bob-tail nag,

Doo-dah! doo-dah!

I keep my money in an old tow-bag,

Oh, doo-dah-day!

Gwine to run all night!...

Listening Guide 6.2 “De Camptown Races” STEPHEN C. FOSTER

Listen & Refl ect

1. What can you infer from the lyrics about the song’s persona? Do you get any sense of the
   persona’s race, gender, age, economic status, educational background, lifestyle, or outlook
   on life? What specifi cs about the song create those impressions?


2. How does this performance differ from that of “De Boatmen’s Dance” (see LG 6.1)? What
   are the musical effects of those differences?

CD 1.18

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