Go Back And Fetch It – Kristina R Gaddy (1)

Perhaps he didn’t expect to see Black and white people dancing together; or maybe these were unlike the dances he was familiar with in Sweden, where people of his class were more likely to emulate French court dancing than English country dances; or possibly he found it amusing that Queen Christina and other Black people were imitating country dances.

One thing became clear to Carlander during his stay: dancing was a common occurrence on Saint-Barthélemy, and the lines between Black and white musical culture were blurrier than someone in Europe might imagine. Like Hans Sloane in Jamaica, Carlander had journeyed to the Caribbean to serve as a doctor but also took the opportunity to collect natural history specimens and provide a report on the formerly French, now Swedish, colony. In his diary and then in a more formal accounting of Saint- Barthélemy, Carlander wrote about music and dance on the island.

He took down musical notation of three songs he heard and the dance steps that went along with them, including a tune called “Black Dance.” All three songs were different from what Carlander had heard in Sweden, and he thought that this was “Black music,” although two of the songs were well known to dancers and musicians in the United States.

“College Hornpipe,” also known as “Sailor’s Hornpipe” (also known as the lead-in to the Popeye the Sailor theme), and “Rodney’s March” both appear in American handwritten music manuscripts and published songbooks from the 1780s and 1790s.2 Carlander didn’t explicitly say who danced each of these songs, although he did note in his diary that one night he danced “a good College Hornpipe.” Saint-Barthélemy was unusual for the Caribbean because drought conditions made large scale plantations unsustainable. Almost everyone lived in the port town of Gustavia, and in 1788, there were about 200 enslaved people on the island and some free people of color.

Most of the inhabitants, however, were of European descent—English, French, and Swedish, along with Dutch, Danish, American, Spanish, and German.3 Carlander wrote about the music and dancing of the various groups on the island. When he first arrived, Carlander thought everything on the island was beautiful “except the Blacks and their singing,” but again, he didn’t expand on exactly what it was he objected to.4 He, like soldier John Gabriel Stedman, might have been making a judgment specifically about people who were carrying on perceived African traditions. The enslaved people gathered on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, Carlander wrote.

By law, they were allowed to dance only until 8:00 p.m.

Manufactured in the United States of America Designed and typeset by Lindsay Starr in Latienne Pro and Rosella Cover art: violin © Adobe Stock/KseniaKrop; banjo in Sloane, Voyage to the Islands; rhythmic patterns in Focke, West-Indië LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Names: Gaddy, Kristina R. author | Giddens, Rhiannon, 1977–author Title: Go back and fetch it : recovering early Black music in the Americas for fiddle and banjo / Kristina R. Gaddy and Rhiannon Giddens. Description: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, 2025. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2025013891 | ISBN 9781469683096 paperback alk. paper | ISBN 9781469683096 epub | ISBN 9781469690582 pdf Subjects: LCSH: African Americans—Music—19th century—History and criticism | African Americans—Music—18th century—History and criticism | Black people—America—Music—19th century—History and criticism | Black people—America—Music—18th century—History and criticism | African Americans—Music | Black people—America—Music | Folk music—United States | Folk music—America | Violin music—Scores | Banjo music—Scores | BISAC: MUSIC / Ethnomusicology | HISTORY / World | LCGFT: Folk songs | Scores | Songbooks Classification: LCC ML3556 .G24 2025 | DDC 780.89/96—dc23/eng/20250528 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025013891 For product safety concerns under the European Union’s General Product Safety Regulation (EU GPSR), please contact [email protected] or write to the University of North Carolina Press and Mare Nostrum Group B.V., Mauritskade 21D, 1091 GC Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

OceanofPDF.com To the next generation of Black banjoists, fiddlers, guitarists, bassists, vocalists, and musicians carrying on the tradition OceanofPDF.com CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS LIST OF MUSICAL TRANSCRIPTIONS AND BANJO TABLATURES Understanding This Music Playing This Music CHAPTER 1 Angola, Papa, and Koromanti JAMAICA, 1687-1688 CHAPTER 2 An African Song or Chant BARBADOS, CA. 1772-1779 CHAPTER 3 A Black Soldier’s Song SURINAME, 1770S CHAPTER 4 Calemba and The Colymba JAMAICA, 1770S CHAPTER 5 Pompey Ran Away VIRGINIA, 1782 CHAPTER 6 Black Dance SAINT-BARTHÉLEMY, 1788 CHAPTER 7 Congo VIRGINIA, CA.

1790 CHAPTER 8 Aia bombaia bombé HAITI, 1814 CHAPTER 9 Roaring River LOUISIANA, 1840S CHAPTER 10 Tárawan sa de SURINAME, 1855 CHAPTER 11 Throw the Banjo Out of Tune ELMIRA, NEW YORK, 1850-1851 So Come Along SOUTHERN UNITED STATES CHAPTER 12 Poor Rosy SOUTH CAROLINA, 1862 Round the Corn, Sally!

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 00b1c260b6ad2ae8
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 61,236,462 bytes (58.4 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781469683096, 9781469690582
• Pages: 150
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 143.58 minutes
• Total Words: 28,716
• Total Characters: 177,095
• Average Words per Page: 191.44
• Average Characters per Page: 1180.63

Most Frequent Words

music (295), black (190), people (166), african (154), dance (153), banjo (146), songs (140), piece (95), song (94), also (90), enslaved (87), transcription (77), time (75), one (71), new (69), played (69), dances (68), see (66), white (65), slave (64), university (54), states (54), suriname (54), american (54), tune (52), musical (51), dancing (51), jamaica (50), two (50), carolina (49), notes (49), congo (48), united (47), play (46), wrote (45), book (44), european (44), chapter (43), first (41), north (40), tunes (40), years (39), although (39), tablature (39), note (39), made (38), mckim (38), collection (37), playing (37), like (37), john (36), stedman (36), descent (35), heard (35), jig (34), americas (33), rhiannon (33), press (33), carlander (33), barbados (32), virginia (32), even (32), tuning (32), com (31), koromanti (31), part (31), sloane (30), york (30), second (30), lyrics (30), three (30), man (30), oceanofpdf (29), early (29), musicians (29), slavery (29), religious (29), modern (29), family (29), free (28), history (28), corn (28), giddens (27), come (27), garrison (27), west (27), measure (27), many (26), library (26), transcriptions (26), away (26), banja (26), however (26), know (26), work (25), blackface (25), danced (25), rhythm (25), focke (24), different (24).

PDF Download