Blackbird Get Up

DESCRIPTION: Alternate lines are a chorus, "Ay-ah." The shantyman sings "White bird get up... she break/shake she tail... Black bird get up... she do the same" "Donna ... Emmalina girl .. come go with me"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1974 (Abrahams-DeepTheWaterShallowTheShore)
KEYWORDS: courting shanty bird Black(s)
FOUND IN: West Indies(St Vincent)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Abrahams-DeepTheWaterShallowTheShore, pp. 75-78,93-94, "Blackbird Get Up" (2 texts, 1 tune)
NOTES [71 words]: A song to row by when blackfish whaling, but "when we reach fifty or sixty yards, we stop becau' we does need silence. We stop singing; when he hears some noise he would sound and go to bottom" [Abrahams].
For a comment by Blacks making the accusation that what the white man does, "the brown man does the same," see "She Gets There Just the Same (Jim Crow Car)"; in the West Indies, see Olive Lewin's version from Jamaica. - BS
Last updated in version 4.0
File: AWIS075

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